


Bad Moon Rising

by FalconStorm



Category: Supernatural
Genre: vampire!Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-11 07:34:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 29,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15967682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FalconStorm/pseuds/FalconStorm
Summary: Dean finds a case involving vampires, but like nothing they've ever seen before. Leaving a bite mark with only two fang punctures and a livid hickey behind, it doesn't match anything they've ever seen. What is this new kind of vampire? How do they kill it? And can Sam save Dean when the bloodsucker tries to make him into what it is?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic takes place after Season 13, episode 6. It will deviate from there based on events in the fic, but I will be pulling certain events into the fic because the events of Season 13 are not suspended, just changed. Think of it as a divergent timeline.
> 
> **This fic is complete. I will post one chapter per day until it is all up.

The creature woke with a gasp and flinched away from the blinding nimbus of light pouring down on it. Afterimages danced against the backs of its eyelids and it snarled at the radiant being glaring down at it.

“You’ve been brought here for one reason. You are tasked with destroying Sam and Dean Winchester. Nothing in this dimension has succeeded thus far. Perhaps you will fare better.”

“What? What are you talking about?” The creature brought up an arm to shield its eyes from the blinding light and tried to squint past the nimbus, but it couldn’t see anything but white.

“The Winchesters! Kill the Winchesters! Destroy them so they can’t come back. Ever. Do that and I will return you to your home.”

“Home? Who are you? Where am I?”

“The answers to these questions matter not. You have one purpose. Destroy the Winchesters. Do that and you may go home.”

“Who are these Winchesters? What have they done to deserve destruction? Where would I even find them?”

“Nest. Feed. Kill. They will come to you.”

Before the creature could ask more questions, the light flared, piercing through arm and eyelids to spike into the creature’s brain, rendering it insensate.

<<>>

Dean Winchester punched a button on the bunker intercom, blasting Creedence Clearwater through every air-tight, echoing chamber in the building. In his room, Sam jerked out of a sound sleep and swore as the familiar lyrics pounded into his skull.

_I see a bad moon a-rising_  
_I see trouble on the way_  
_I see earthquakes and lightnin'_  
_I see bad times today_

_Don't go 'round tonight_  
_It's bound to take your life_  
_There's a bad moon on the rise_

____

____

“Damnit, Dean! I had just gotten to sleep!”

The music drowned him out and as a general rule, his voice didn’t carry through steel walls anyway. Cursing and muttering as the music drilled into his head, he pulled a tee shirt on and lurched toward the door. The smell of freshly cooked bacon hit his nose as he stumbled into the corridor. In the distance, he heard Dean’s cheerful rumble singing along to the lyrics and he briefly entertained a fantasy of wrapping fingers around his brother’s throat and strangling him to death.

“Why did someone write a song about the impending apocalypse? You stopped that from happening.” Castiel came up from behind him with a quizzical tilt to his head. Sam groaned, his head pounding too much to explain the song to the angel. He rubbed at his red, bloodshot eyes and stalked down the corridor to the kitchen.

Dean danced in place as he assembled a monstrosity of toast, mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato and enough bacon to bring on a cardiac event. When Sam killed the music from the panel on the wall, he kept singing and dancing as though nothing had changed. He picked up his monstrosity and turned with a grin on his face.

“Sam! Good! You’re awake.”

“Now I am. It’s two in the morning. Bad enough you’re awake. You had to drag us up with you?”

“Uh...I don’t actually sleep,” Cas said, staring the obvious. Again. Sam shot him an annoyed glower but ground his teeth on a scathing retort.

“I found a case.”

Dean carried his heart attack on a plate to the kitchen table where a laptop sat open to a news article.

“Vampire nest, as close as I can tell. The news is reporting the fangs as implants. Calling it a cult initiation thing.”

Sam scowled, but sat in front of the computer, intrigued by the article’s headline. Vampire Cult at Center of Human Trafficking Ring.

“The article says everyone was found dead. It sounds like a hunter already got there.”

Dean squished his sandwich together, squeezing tomato-soaked mayonnaise out of the sides, and took a big bite. His eyes gleamed as he chewed.

“I thought that, too,” he said with a full mouth. Sam ignored the crumbs of toast that splattered on the table as he skimmed the rest of the article. Dean only swallowed part of his bite before he went on.

“But if it was a hunter, he was sloppy. Shoulda burned the bodies, at least. So, I called up Tammy, that hunter we met down in Dallas three years ago. Thought I’d ask her to check it out, see if she could find the hunter, explain his mistake and show him the ropes.” Dean took another bite of his sandwich and grinned as he chewed. Sam sighed and glared at him over the top of the laptop.

“So how is this a case for us? Tammy can handle it and we should be looking for Jack. Or did you forget he’s still out there?”

Dean wiped toast crumbs from his lips and set the sandwich down.

“Well, Tammy already checked it out. If it’s a hunter, it’s not a human one. Someone jumped her. She doesn’t remember much more than that, but she woke up the next morning on the side of the road with a weird set of fang marks in her neck.”

“Weird? Weird how?”

Dean picked up his phone, opened a photo and handed it to Sam. It showed Tammy’s neck from chin to collarbone with a neat pair of holes in the flesh, surrounded by a livid red hickey. Sam scowled at it.

“That’s, like, some movie monster shit right there!” Dean said as he slapped the table. Cas moved up behind Sam to examine the picture.

“That’s not a vampire bite,” Cas said. “There aren’t enough punctures.”

“No, there aren’t,” Sam said, zooming the phone in on the bite. “Normally, I’d think this is a human imitating a movie vampire, but…”

“But...there’s a hickey,” Dean said, grinning with triumph.

“Yeah. A hickey. You don’t see those in the movies, so a movie imitator wouldn’t do that.” Sam touched the phone screen over the puncture wounds, as though he might be able to feel them through the glass. “We’ve seen something like this before, but that was a shapeshifter turning into movie monsters. This...somehow, I don’t think that’s what this is.”

“Neither do I.” Dean took a bite of his sandwich. “We don’t have any leads on Jack and I’m going stir crazy in this bunker. Tammy’s spooked and needs the help. Let’s check it out.”

“Fine,” Sam said with a sigh, “but I’m sleeping on the drive down there.”

“Awesome.”


	2. Chapter 2

The shiny black Chevy Impala that never seemed to age despite hundreds of thousands of miles to her name pulled into the parking lot of a seedy roadside motel on Interstate 20. A much younger version of the same car waited for them with a woman leaning against the trunk. She had walnut brown hair pulled back into a tight French braid and tucked into a ball at the nape of her neck. When they’d seen her last, Dean had suggested she wear her hair down and she’d gone on a rant about how loose hair in a fight made a perfect hand hold for the enemy and did he want her to die? He had never mentioned it again.

“Hi, Tammy,” Sam said, emerging from the car in a considerably better mood after several hours of napping. “How are you feeling?”

Tammy touched the bandage on the left side of her neck and grimaced.

“I’ve been better, but it’s healing.”

“Didja kill the thing that did that to you?” Dean asked, coming around the back of the car as Cas emerged from the backseat.

“No. It’s fast. Faster than any vampire I’ve ever seen. So fast I couldn’t tell you what gender it is, much less what it looks like.”

“An alpha?” Sam asked.

“I thought all the alphas died.”

“Yeah, so did we,” Dean said, leaning against his baby. “Until we ran into one the leviathans missed.”

“Well, if it’s an alpha, it’s alpha of a creature I’ve never heard of. It acts like a vampire, but the teeth are all wrong.”

“Yeah. And...no offense, but if this thing is so fast, why are you still alive?” Sam asked.

“I have no idea.” Tammy shook her head and reached up to touch the bandage again, like a reminder that she really had survived the encounter. “It attacked me. Fed. The way it feeds...it must inject some kind of paralyzing agent. I couldn’t move. It could have killed me a thousand times over, but the only wounds I have are a few bruises from hitting it and the bite.”

“Okay. Yeah. This is right up our alley,” Dean said, pushing away from the car. “I’ll get us a room and then we hunt.”

<<>>

Strands of broken crime scene tape flapped in the wind that whipped around the old garage. One rolling door stood halfway open, revealing a hint of the car lift on the inside. Judging by the rust coating the mechanisms, it hadn’t been used for its intended purpose in years. 

“Cas, you cover the open door. Shoot anything that comes through,” Dean said as he chambered a round in his gun. The angel, who’d been practicing in the bunker’s target range, moved off a little, aiming the muzzle of his own gun at the cracked concrete just outside the door.

“Are we sure a bullet will kill it?” Sam hissed at Dean’s back.

“No. That’s why you have the machete. If silver and beheading don’t kill it, I got nuthin’.”

Dean eased up beside the pedestrian door that gaped open just a couple of inches. It allowed a thin line of light to illuminate a dusty old desk and a workbench beyond. He pushed it open and covered first one wall, then the other. Nothing moved inside the darkness of the decommissioned garage. Faint smells of tire rubber and motor oil still haunted the shadowy interior. Sam followed at his back, his movements matching his brother’s like a well-oiled machine. They stayed out of each other’s strike range without consciously thinking about it.

Tammy paused just inside the door, admiring their coordination as they cleared the interior. She held her own gun aimed at the floor, finger resting on the guard so she wouldn’t accidentally shoot off a round if something startled her. 

Dean signaled the ground floor cleared and gestured Sam toward the stairs that led into a second floor loft. Sam stepped onto the first stair and the thing just…appeared behind him.

Tammy couldn’t make out what it did in the darkness, but Sam went down in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs. 

“Sam!” Dean brought his gun up, but found himself pointing at empty space in the split second it took to focus his vision. Tammy brought her own gun up, aimed in Dean’s general direction. It would go for him next. She knew it. She transferred her finger to the trigger and squeezed the moment that movement registered in her peripheral vision. 

The bullet hit something that rang like a bell, followed by a meaty thunk. Dean groaned and dropped in place, his gun spinning across the floor.

“Sam! Dean!” Cas ducked under the half open garage door, thunderous fury etched across his features. Tammy didn’t stick around to see what happened. With her heart in her throat, she ducked through the creaky door and ran. If she’d done what she feared, she dared not face the wrath of Dean’s brother, or his avenging angel.


	3. Chapter 3

Sam woke to a fiery ache in his shoulder blades. He squeezed his eyes and tried to rub the grit from them only to discover his arms bound behind his back, tied from wrist to elbow. He wouldn’t be slipping out of those ropes.

Dean sat a few feet away, propped up against a wall, head lolling to the side, his hair and the side of his face caked in blood. A smear of red painted a garish smudge over his mouth and dripped down his chin. Several bite marks showed above the collar of his shirt. Sam jerked in an instinctive effort to get to his brother.

“I’ve heard stories about the two of you.” The soft, tenor voice carried more hints of curiosity than malice. “You’re downright legendary among the vampires that populate this world. You’ve turned them into a dying breed, and I can see why. Even mortally wounded, your brother fought me.” 

The owner of the voice moved into Sam’s line of sight and the Winchester froze, brow furrowed with confusion. He didn’t remember much of the confrontation. Like Tammy had said, the thing moved too fast for the human eye to follow, so he hadn’t gotten a good look at it until now.

It looked like a teenage boy, hair dyed bright red with streaks of white. His skin was the color of rich caramel and his slanted, dark eyes gave him an exotic air. Everything about him looked young, except those eyes. Something about them looked utterly ancient.

“Who...what are you?” Sam snarled. “What have you done to my brother?”

The boy knelt beside Sam and reached out to touch the blood oozing from a cut he had picked up when he fell. Sam tried to jerk away but didn’t get far.

The monster raised bloody fingers to his lips and licked them clean. He bared his teeth, presenting a pair of long, arched fangs with lethal points. They certainly looked impressive, but couldn’t compare to the monstrous dentistry that most vampires could produce when they fed.

“What do you think I am?”

“I have no idea. If I didn’t know better, I’d say vampire, but you look nothing like a real vampire.”

The boy sat back on his heels, something troubled flitting across his face.

“No. I don’t look like the vampires of this realm, and yet, that’s what I am. My name is Omega, and you. You taste of demon blood.”

Sam bristled and his body convulsed in an attempt to lunge at the vampire. Omega lifted a blood red eyebrow at him and stood up.

“Your friend over there tastes like pure light, and your brother...well, he tasted of death.”

Sam froze and looked at Dean again, examining him as closely as he could at a distance. Did his chest rise and fall? He couldn’t tell, but something about his pose...he didn’t look dead. Sam had seen enough death to recognize a corpse when he saw one.

“He was dying when I tasted him. So much blood lost. Pity, that.” The vampire knelt next to the elder Winchester and placed a hand against his chest. “There’s hope, though. I can feel his soul in there, still. He may make the transition, yet.”

“Transition?” Sam glared at Omega and bared his teeth. “What did you do to my brother?!”

“I’m attempting to save his life.”

“By turning him into a vampire? He’d rather die!” Sam thrashed against the floor, jerking at the ropes binding him and snarling at the vampire. Omega scowled at him.

“I do not possess the healing blood. I could not save him any other way.”

“Dean is stronger than you think! He would have survived whatever you did to him.”

Omega laughed and shook his head.

“Don’t you remember? I did nothing to him. Your friend tried to shoot me and the bullet ricocheted. It hit your brother in the heart. A terrible accident, but not my doing.”

“Tammy? Tammy!”

“She fled when your brother collapsed.”

“She’ll bring help.”

“No doubt. Until then, I have some questions for you.”

Sam glared up at the vampire and snarled at him. “Screw you.”

Omega frowned, a genuine look of confusion crossing his features. He turned to examine the unconscious Dean and then glanced over his shoulder at something out of Sam’s line of sight; presumably Cas and Sam prayed the angel was not gravely injured.

“I see.” Omega turned back to Sam and sighed. “I suppose I haven’t presented myself in the best light, but you do make it difficult to open discussions when you come in, guns blazing.”

It was Sam’s turn to direct a confused scowl at the creature. Omega dropped into a tailor’s seat near his head, the movement so graceful he looked like a paper construct designed to fall into a sitting position.

“I realize it must be hard to believe, but I don’t want to hurt you. Any of you. If you don’t want to answer my questions, don’t. I’m not going to torture the answers out of you, but you may be interested in the nature of the questions. Tell me. Do you know of any creature in your world that has the power to rip me out of my dimension and wants you dead?”

Sam opened his mouth to tell the vampire to screw off, but closed it again when the question truly penetrated. He frowned, his mind flipping through the long list of things that would like to see the end of the Winchester brothers. Finally, he shook his head.

“Plenty of people want us dead, but there’s only one thing I know of that can open inter dimensional portals. I...I hope he doesn’t want us dead.” After all, Jack left them for fear of hurting them. If he’d gone dark side, surely he’d do the deed himself, not bring someone else in to kill them. “What did this...thing...look like?”

“Light. All I could see was light. It quite blinded me for a few days. It told me it would send me home only if I managed to kill Sam and Dean Winchester and make it stick.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Sam asked, scowling at the thing. “I’m sure you can guess we’re not going to just roll over and die for you.”

“I don’t negotiate with terrorists, much less do their bidding,” Omega said with a hard set to his jaw. “I want to hear your side of the story before I pick a side in this battle you have going with the monsters of your world.”

Sam shook his head in bafflement. What kind of monster negotiated when they had the upper hand?

“How about you untie me? Gesture of good faith.”

Omega scowled and cocked his head to the side. He stared into Sam’s eyes as though he could see through to his soul.

“Yes. I believe you’re actually listening, now. I can do that.” The vampire rose from his sitting position like a puppet pulled up by its strings. He knelt behind Sam and worked at the knots holding him in place. To Sam’s surprise, the vampire massaged feeling back into his flesh as he pulled the ropes away, going so far as to help him unkink his cramped shoulders when the last knot loosened on his wrists. Sam sat up and scrambled over to Dean’s sprawled body. He pressed trembling fingers into the hollow beneath his jaw, trying his best to ignore the wash of dark blood that stained the front of his brother’s jacket.

“I can’t find his heartbeat,” he ground out through clenched teeth.

“You won’t,” Omega said. “He’s dead. I told you as much. It remains to be seen whether his soul will flee or he will make the transition, but for the moment, Dean Winchester is dead.”

With a snarled protest, Sam launched himself at Omega. As before, the vampire moved faster than the human Winchester could follow and had him on his knees in a headlock before he could blink.

“I thought we had moved beyond this, Sam. I don’t want to hurt you, but I won’t allow you to hurt me, either. I’ve done what I can to help your brother.”

“You can’t help him! He’s dead!”

“Only mostly dead.” Omega chuckled, but Sam didn’t find the movie reference funny. He snarled and tried to jerk out of the vampire’s grip, only to be shoved to the floor for his efforts.

“Look, I can command you to be still and do as I say, but I can imagine how you’ll react to that. I’d rather not go there. Dean’s soul is still in his body. That’s good. Very good. Give him time and you’re likely to get your brother back.”

Sam growled under his breath, but he got the message. He couldn’t fight this thing. Not alone.

“Fine. Where’s Cas?”

“Cas? Is that the one that tastes of light?”

Sam nodded, although he couldn’t imagine how anything tasted like light, but if anything could, it would be an angel. 

“He’s over here.” Omega released Sam and gestured to the other side of the work table. 

Sam lumbered to his feet, glaring down at the vampire as he dusted his knees off. For a moment, he felt a wash of embarrassment that someone over a foot shorter than him and probably half his weight could best him. Dean would never let him hear the end of it. Assuming he ever spoke again.

Shaking that melancholy thought off, Sam went to check on the angel.

Cas breathed, but he didn’t react when Sam shook him.

“Cas. Hey, Cas!” Sam shook him again and glared up at Omega when he got no response. “What did you do to him?”

“I tasted him,” Omega said, leaning against the worktable, arms crossed. “The venom affects everyone differently. You recovered faster than most.”

“I’m untying him,” Sam said with a look that dared the vampire to gainsay him. Omega shrugged and watched him work at the knots with impassive eyes. 

As the last ropes fell away, a faint sound came from Dean’s direction and Omega pushed away from the work table, eyes alert and muscles singing with tension. He crossed the space to the Winchester in the blink of an eye and knelt next to him.

“Hey! What are you doing?” Sam demanded, dropping the rope in his hand. Omega ignored him as he lifted one of Dean’s eyelids to examine the eyeball underneath.

“Don’t touch him!” Sam lurched to his feet and Omega whirled on him, hissing and snarling. His fangs glistened in the dim light.

“Stay back! He’s mine!”

Sam pulled up short. As much as he wanted...needed to protect his brother, he’d learned he couldn’t challenge this new kind of vampire. Not directly. Pressing his lips together in a frustrated line, he put his hands up and took a step back.

Omega’s snarl subsided to a low growl and then went silent. He touched Dean’s shoulder and closed his eyes. Taking a deep breath, he opened them again.

“My apologies,” he said in careful, measured tones. “Your brother’s transition is all but guaranteed. The protective bond between a vampire and his progeny doesn’t form like this unless transition is certain. I’m going to be a little unreasonable about Dean and his safety until I feel he has fully adjusted. He won’t wake for several hours, yet, but when he does, he’ll be ravenous. We need to be somewhere more secure than this before then.”

“Ravenous?” Sam scowled. “He won’t feed. This has happened to him before. He didn’t feed, then.”

“No!” Omega snarled, frustration writ across his features. “This has not happened to him before. You admitted, yourself, that you’ve never seen anything like me before. Whatever Dean may have gone through in the past, it’s nothing like this. We need a more secure location...and a donor.”

“You mean a victim.” Sam’s brows drew down in a hard, angry look. “No. Look, we know a way to reverse vampirism. If you’re feeling so protective, then let me try to change him back.”

Omega sighed and looked to the ceiling as though he might find some much needed patience there.

“I am not one of your vampires. What makes you think your cure will work on him?”

“It’s worked before.” Sam glared at Omega with a stubborn set to his jaw. “You’ve been trying to convince me you’re not our enemy. Prove it. Let me try the cure. If it doesn’t work, I’ll offer up my own wrist.”

Omega glanced down at Dean and his harsh expression softened.

“Fine. You can try your cure, but when it doesn’t work, it will be your throat he goes after. I will do my best to keep him from killing you.”


	4. Chapter 4

Sam had all the ingredients he needed to make the Campbell vampire cure, but getting Dean into the Impala made him realize he couldn’t administer it until his brother came to. Corpses couldn’t swallow.

Shuddering at that thought, he muscled Castiel’s comatose body into the front seat while Omega guarded his progeny in the back. He glared at the older vampire, but honestly didn’t know what to do with him. He wasn’t hostile at the moment but he’d made it clear he wasn’t leaving Dean’s side. With no idea how to kill him or if he even could at this point, Sam filed him in an extremely tentative ally category and climbed into the driver’s seat.

He tried to call Tammy but she wasn’t answering her phone. Thrown off balance by the unexpected turn of events and hating the off kilter feeling, Sam headed toward the one place he had grudgingly begun to accept as home: the bunker. He wanted its familiar walls, it’s library stuffed full of reports and lore...and its dungeon, just in case...only in case...the cure didn’t work.

Cas woke just shy of an hour into the journey and stared around the front seat of the Impala with bewilderment. He rarely rode in the front.

“Where’s Dean?”

Sam glanced at the groggy angel and back at the road. 

“He’s in the back with the...vampire.”

Cas jerked and his head whipped around to glare into the backseat. Omega hissed at him and a low growl trickled out of his throat.

“Don’t hurt him, Cas. He’s turned Dean into a vampire and we need his blood for the cure.” Sam glanced at Omega in the rear view mirror, trying to silently convey a similar warning to him.

Cas narrowed his eyes at the vampire and grit his teeth but stayed where he was.

“What happened?”

Sam explained what he knew as succinctly as he could. When he mentioned that Omega had bitten all of them, Cas sat up and reached out to touch his neck. He had barely noticed the ache of fang marks in his flesh, but the pain vanished as the angel pressed two fingers against his skin.

“I forgot you could do that,” Sam said as an idea blossomed in his brain. “Can you fix Dean?”

Cas glared into the back seat again and Omega growled a warning.

“I don’t know.”

Cas turned in his seat and reached for Dean. Omega snarled and slapped the hand away, putting himself between the angel and Dean.

“I must touch him to know if I can fix him,” Cas growled. Omega snarled again and pushed Dean into the corner of the backseat farthest from Cas.

Baring his teeth, Cas reached into the backseat and Omega grabbed his wrist. The angel yanked him forward and slammed his palm onto the vampire’s head. A brilliant gold light filled the back of the car and Omega screamed.

“Cas! No!” They all lurched toward the front windshield as Sam slammed the brakes on. The Impala’s tires squealed in protest and they swerved onto the road’s verge. “We need his blood to cure Dean!”

Sam slammed the car into park and turned to grab the angel’s arm. Cas released the vampire and Omega fell back against the seat, panting and groaning. Tendrils of smoke wafted from his head.

“There’s still blood after a smiting,” Cas said, scowling down at his hand. He looked back up at the groaning, still moving, vampire. “How are you still alive?”

Omega struggled into a more upright position.

“Unless you have a dhampir up your sleeve, I can’t die. You can hurt me.” He pressed a hand into his stomach and winced. “You can cut me into pieces, but I’m still here. My soul, my being, is tied to my physical body, whatever condition that body happens to be in.”

Sam and Cas exchanged matching confused scowls.

“What are you? A leviathan?” Sam asked.

“A what?” Omega scowled.

“He’s not a leviathan. I don’t know what he is,” Cas said, looking back at the vampire.

“We’ve already established I’m not from around here and unlike anything you’ve ever seen.” Omega uncurled from his defensive position and the smell of burned flesh started to fade.

“And you’ve made Dean like you are?” Cas scowled at the vampire’s nod and he vanished from the front seat to appear in the back seat, wedged between Omega and Dean.

Omega snarled and lunged for the angel. Cas shoved him back against the door with a warning glare.

“Stop or I will smite you again.”

The two unearthly creatures glared into each other’s eyes for a long, tense minute. Omega grit his teeth and looked away first, relaxing back against the door.

Cas turned to Dean and touched his forehead with two fingers. He scowled and rolled up his right sleeve.

“Cas,” Sam said, a touch of panic coloring his voice. “What are you doing?” The only time he’d seen the angel do that…

“I need to check something,” Cas said and shoved his hand into Dean’s stomach, just below his sternum.

Golden light limned the edge of Cas’s arm where it penetrated Dean’s torso and Dean arched under him, face contorted in silent agony. His eyes never opened, but no one in the car doubted that he felt something. Omega growled and hissed, but stayed on his side of the car, glaring hatred at Cas.

Dean collapsed back against the seat when Cas released him, head lolling to the side. The angel appeared back in the front seat, rolling his sleeve down.

“I can’t heal him. Whatever has happened to him…it has changed him, at a genetic level. He is an entirely different creature.”

“But he’s still in there? Still Dean? Still…alive?” Sam asked. Cas glanced into the backseat, lips pressed together.

“He’s still in there…and he’s alone. Nothing possesses him. His soul…it is as Omega claims. His soul is tied to every fiber…cell…molecule that makes up his body. And it’s...shielded. Somehow. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Sam grit his teeth and turned back to the road. He put the Impala in gear and pulled out onto the highway.

“We’ll try the Campbell cure. It will fix him,” he said.

“Sam, I don’t think…”

“Don’t. I have to try. We have to try.” Sam glared at the road as they sped toward home. Cas watched him, pity etched across his features, but he didn’t argue further.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updating early by special request. :)

Sam pulled into the bunker garage shortly before dawn. Weariness dragged at his consciousness, but he pushed it away. If he slogged through long enough, he’d hit a second wind, and a third, fourth or fifth if the job called for it. This wasn’t his first rodeo by any stretch of the imagination.

Omega insisted on carrying the still unconscious Dean into the bunker. Cas tried to help him and the vampire growled and glared. The angel grit his teeth and moved to press his palm to Omega’s head again.

“Don’t,” Sam said, grabbing Cas by the shoulder. “It won’t hurt anything to let him carry Dean inside. Fighting only wastes time. We have to get the cure mixed.”

Cas cut a glance at Sam and took a step back, tension singing through his shoulders. Omega bared his fangs at the angel and clutched Dean closer. He looked ridiculous. Dean was easily twice his size and he looked like he might collapse under the Winchester’s weight at any moment, but he carried the man with ease.

“Show him where Dean’s room is,” Sam said. “I’ll get the stuff we need.”

Cas narrowed his eyes at Omega, but motioned toward the door into the bunker with his head. “It’s this way.”

Omega followed and pushed past Cas at the door to the room. He laid Dean out on his bed, arranging him as comfortably as possible. Dean’s eyes danced under his eyelids as though deep in REM sleep. Cas leaned against the dresser next to the bed, watching the vampire…no, vampires…with narrowed eyes. His fingers itched to rip Omega’s head from his shoulders, but they needed his blood, and if this didn’t work, they would need his knowledge of what he was…what Dean was, now. Still, imagining Omega screaming his way through another smiting brought the angel some modicum of comfort. The vampire ignored him as he hovered over his progeny, making minute adjustments to Dean’s position on the bed, much like a fretting mother hen.

Sam entered the room with a mason jar filled with viscous red liquid and chunks of herbs in one hand and a syringe in the other. His eyes swept the small space, assessing the tension in the air so thick he could cut it with a knife. He set the jar on the desk close to where Omega knelt and uncapped the syringe.

“I need your blood.”

Omega held his arm out without taking his eyes off of Dean. Sam glanced at Cas and shuffled in place before grabbing the vampire’s wrist. Pressing his lips together, he inserted the needle into the crook of Omega’s elbow. The vampire never twitched.

“He will wake soon,” Omega said as Sam pulled the plunger back, sucking the dark red, almost black liquid into the syringe. Dean’s head moved, eyes flicking under his eyelids. “He won’t be very coherent. The blood lust is…powerful. I will...”

Dean’s eyes flew open before Omega could complete his statement. He snarled and lunged toward Sam, the first human he laid eyes on. Omega shoved him back down on the bed, climbing on top of him to use his knees to pin his arms. Dean heaved and thrashed, snapping at the vampire holding him down. Long, sharp fangs flashed in his mouth and Sam’s stomach lurched.

The younger Winchester retrieved the needle from where it was still stuck in Omega’s arm, flopping around like a grotesque growth. Cas pushed away from the dresser, glaring down at the thrashing Dean with clenched fists. His instincts screamed at him to eliminate the threat to Sam, but that threat was his best friend and the only person in the world whose safety he put before Sam’s. Gritting his teeth, he turned his back on the tableau and retreated to the far wall. He could return in a flash if something went wrong, but he couldn’t stay this close to the brothers, with his instincts warring over which one of them to protect from the other.

Sam injected the blood into the mason jar and turned back toward Dean, but quickly realized he couldn’t get his brother to drink it while he thrashed and snapped.

“Dean.” Sam set the mason jar aside and leaned over his brother. Dean’s eyes landed on him and he fought harder, almost overpowering his maker. “Dean! Snap out of it!”

Dean snarled and his eyes glared at Sam with no recognition, only hunger. Reaching in his back pocket, Sam pulled out a syringe of dead man’s blood. He shoved it into Dean’s leg and depressed the plunger. 

Dean howled and bucked, the sounds coming from his throat more animal than human. Omega glanced down at his thigh and then back up at Sam with narrowed, thunderous eyes.

“What did you do?” he hissed, baring his fangs.

“Dead man’s blood. It knocks vampires out.”

“Not me. Not him! We’ve already established I am not the type of vampire you’re used to! You’ve only made him worse.” Dean bucked under Omega’s grip and almost succeeded in throwing him off. The older vampire returned his attention to his progeny and shifted to get a better grip on him.

Clenching his teeth until a muscle pulsed in his jaw, Sam walked around to the other side of the bed, where he had a clear shot with his dominant right hand.

“I’m sorry, Dean.” He cocked his fist back and punched Dean in the face. Dean’s head turned for a second but he snapped back toward Sam, fangs bared and snarling. Baring his own teeth, Sam pulled back and punched him again, this time with the strength and deadly precision he reserved for the monsters. Dean’s head snapped to the side and blood spilled from a split over his cheekbone. The cut healed before their eyes, but the blood remained. He turned back to Sam, teeth bared, but this time, his eyes recognized his brother.

“What the hell, Sam?” His eyes cut down to the knees that pinned his arms and back up to Omega’s shocked face. “Who the hell are you?”

Sam sighed with relief as Dean yanked at where Omega’s knees pinned his arms, scowling. He might have fought harder against the stranger holding him down, except that the back of his head took in the rest of the situation: Sam unfettered, Cas leaning against the far wall, the familiar sights of his room in the bunker, and assessed the situation annoying but not immediately dangerous.

“I’m sorry Dean. You weren’t thinking. You…you’ve been turned into a vampire. I needed you aware to drink the cure before you broke down and fed,” Sam said, fetching the mason jar from where he’d left it. Dean scowled at him, but took a moment to explore the inside of his mouth with his tongue. He found the new dentistry and paled.

“Son of a bitch!”

The corner of Sam’s mouth twitched into a small smile and his shoulders relaxed.

“You can let him go, Omega. He’s him again.”

The elder vampire eased off of Dean’s arms and he slid to the side. Dean rubbed the spots where his knees had dug in and sat up, scowling.

“Ah...Sammy? Maybe spoke too soon,” Dean said with a grimace. “You smell a bit like a double bacon cheeseburger right now. I...uh…” Dean’s eyes glazed over a bit and a low growl trickled out of his throat. 

Sam shuddered and stirred the concoction in the jar. He turned to see Omega hovering over an increasingly feral Dean.

“I won’t let him kill anyone, but you had best try your cure quickly,” Omega said. “He’s slipping, fast.”

“Dean!” Sam lightly slapped his brother’s cheek and gripped his jaw to get his attention. Dean’s eyes latched onto his throat and he lunged forward, but came up short when Omega grabbed his shoulders and bore down to hold him in place.

“Dean! Don’t make me punch you again!” Sam shook him by the shoulder and Dean scrunched his eyes closed, digging a palm into one eye socket.

“I’m good. I’m here, Sammy.”

“Here.” Sam pressed the mason jar into his hand. Dean looked down at it and made a face.

“Did I ever tell you this stuff is nastier than the African dream root?”

Without waiting for an answer, Dean tossed the potion back, guzzling it as fast as he could to get past the taste. Two gulps in and he choked as the potion came right back up again. No amount of willpower could keep the heaves at bay and he pitched forward onto the floor, vomiting every drop he’d swallowed all over the concrete.

“No.” Sam’s voice echoed with horror and denial. Omega watched with hooded eyes as Dean spat out the last little bit of potion and lifted his head.

His eyes swept the room, empty of recognition until they landed on Cas. With a hungry snarl, Dean launched himself at the angel. He moved faster than the human eye could follow and slammed Cas against the wall.

“Dean! No!” A stack of Dean’s vinyl records clattered to the floor as Sam knocked them over, lunging in his brother’s wake. Cas held a hand up, keeping him at bay. Dean clutched at the lapels of the angel’s trench coat, forehead buried against his collarbone. His shoulders shook with the effort to resist the raging hunger that demanded he sink fangs into the angel’s throat.

“Stay back, Sam,” Omega said, warning in his voice. “He’s fixated on Cas. He’ll fight you if you try to pull him off and he might hurt you.”

“I don’t care!” Sam spat at the vampire. “He can’t feed. If he does, we can’t bring him back!”

“It’s too late anyway,” Omega said, shaking his head and sliding off the bed. “Your cure failed.”

Dean lifted his head and his bloodshot eyes locked onto Cas’s. The angel scowled as he searched Dean’s face. The barest glimmer of fangs peeked out between the man’s lips. He panted with the effort to hold back, to resist the call of the blood rushing just below the surface of the angel’s skin, but he was losing the battle. His eyes glazed over and his gaze dropped from Cas’s eyes to the pulse thudding in the side of his neck.

Cas reached up to grasp Dean’s jaw, lifting his head so those green eyes flicked back up to meet his gaze. His mind flashed back on everything they’d been through together. There was no one else in existence he considered himself closer to than this man...now, vampire. Pressing his lips into a grim line, he gripped his best friend’s shoulder and lifted his chin, baring his throat. Dean’s control shattered. He lunged for Cas’s throat, sinking fangs deep into his flesh.

Cas cried out and his spine bowed. His teeth clenched and tendons stood out in his neck as Dean gnawed at his flesh. Omega appeared at his side, reaching up to lay a calming hand on Dean’s forehead.

“The blood is freely given. It will not be taken from you. Only feed. There’s no need to ravage.”

Dean’s shoulders hunched, his face buried in the angel’s neck. He took his first swallow and a low, guttural groan rumbled up out of his chest. This was cheeseburgers, beer, and greasy fries, pickle chips fresh from the fryer, bacon piled to the ceiling and a hundred different flavors of pie all rolled into one delectable substance. He guzzled it down as fast as he could draw it from the wound.

Cas clenched his teeth, fighting the overwhelming urge to shove Dean away, slice his head off or smite him into oblivion. This was Dean. His Dean. His best friend. Instead of shoving him away, Cas wrapped his arms around the newly minted vampire, hugging him close, and as he did a sudden wash of euphoria swept over him. With a grunting gasp, his knees gave way and he slid down the wall. Dean followed him down, never once breaking the seal of his lips on the angel’s throat. Omega hovered over them, monitoring Dean’s actions and Cas’s responses, ready to step in if anything went wrong.

Dean came to himself crouched over Cas’s slouched form with blood dripping down his chin. The angel sprawled against the wall, head lolling to the side and eyelids half mast.

“Cas? Cas!”

Dean shook his friend and the angel’s limbs flopped bonelessly, like a fresh corpse.

“Cas, no!”

“He’s fine, Dean,” Omega said. “Stop and listen. You can hear his heart beat. He can’t move because your venom has paralyzed him.”

Dean rounded on his maker with a snarl.

“Who the hell are you?”

“My name is Omega. I am your progenitor. I turned you into a vampire to save your life.”

“You? You did this to me?” Baring his fangs, Dean launched himself at Omega, leading with a vicious right hook that turned the vampire’s head and drew blood. Omega stumbled back with a shocked look on his face, but when Dean came for him again, he managed to deflect the worst of the blow, sending Dean crashing into his desk and showering Sam with splinters. Dean thrashed his way out of the sorry remains of the desk and ploughed into Omega like a linebacker, slamming him into the wall.

“Sam! Get Cas and get out!” Omega shouted, wrestling with Dean. “He won’t want you two to get caught in the crossfire of his rage!”

Sam sprinted across the room and stooped to haul Cas’s dead weight up into a fireman’s carry. He hurried through the door, trusting Omega wouldn’t truly want to hurt his progeny. He couldn’t care less about what happened to Omega. He deserved a thrashing for doing this to Dean.

The thuds and crashes of the two vampires fighting echoed through the whole bunker. Sam settled Cas’s limp form in a chair and checked for a pulse. The angel breathed and his heart beat, but he might as well have been in a coma for all the response Sam got.

Eventually, the sounds of fighting abated and Sam approached Dean’s room warily.

Omega lay, sprawled in the floor, staring up at the ceiling. Blood covered his face from a hundred cuts. They healed as Sam watched, leaving only the streaks of blood behind. Dean sat, propped against a wall, glaring at the floor, one arm braced against his knee. Blood painted his knuckles red and fresh blood had moistened the dried, flaky blood still clinging to his face. None of the furniture in the room had escaped the destruction. Even the bed sagged at an odd angle where it had snapped in the middle.

“Dean?”

Dean’s eyes rose to meet Sam’s and the anger mixed with resignation written across his face twisted his brother’s gut.

“Yeah, Sammy. Is Cas okay?”

Sam sighed and stepped into the room.

“I…honestly don’t know yet. He’s not dead, but he’s in some kind of coma.”

Dean’s eyes cut to the side, guilt replacing every other emotion on his face.

“I tried to hold back, Sammy. It…this blood lust is worse than before. It’s more like the mark of Cain. I couldn’t…I couldn’t stop.” A single tear slipped down his face as he glared at the far wall. “So, I think you know what you’re gonna have to do. There’s no cure this time, Sammy.”

Sam set his lips in a grim line. He’d thought about it already, but Dean should have known he couldn’t kill his own brother. No more than Dean could kill him.

“I’m not killing you, Dean. I don’t even know if I can. Cas smote Omega and he survived it. He says you can’t die.”

“What? Like a leviathan?”

“Minus the weakness to Borax.”

“Then bury me. Chain me up, put me in a box and cover me with concrete.”

“No!” Omega sat up out of his prone position, glaring at Dean. “Sam is right. You can’t die. You would be a prisoner in the confines of your body for all eternity. I won’t allow it. You are my progeny and my responsibility.”

“I’m a monster. You’ve made me into a monster! I’ve already attacked my best friend!”

“Cas is fine,” Omega said, stumbling to his feet with a groan. “I monitored your feeding closely. He’s not dying and he’s not in pain. If you do it right, you don’t have to hurt or kill anyone to feed. I can teach you. I want to teach you. It’s my job as your progenitor.” He crossed the room and held a hand out to Dean. “You’ve taken your rage out on me. Can we talk, now?”

Dean eyed the hand and glanced at his brother. Sam scowled and shrugged. He hadn’t thought much beyond trying to cure Dean, but a part of him had begun formulating a plan B along these lines, although it had involved more bondage and maybe some torture to get what they needed to know out of Omega.

“It can’t hurt to hear him out.”

Dean glanced back to Omega and then struggled to his feet without touching the hand stretched out to him. He shoved past the older vampire and stalked into the library to check on Cas.


	6. Chapter 6

Tammy paced back and forth in the new hotel room she had checked into. She didn’t dare go home. Of the two Winchesters, Sam was the most tech savvy. He could find her address in a New York minute. She had ditched her phone and picked up a burner phone to replace it. Said phone rang on her night stand and she jumped, heart lodged in her throat.

“Darien?” she answered it in a hopeful tone.

“Hey, Tammy. You rang?”

“Yeah. I…I think I’m in deep trouble.”

“What? What happened? You okay?”

“I am for now. I…had a visit from the Winchesters.”

“Oh, Tams! What did I tell you about those guys? They’re trouble with a capital ‘T’!”

“Yeah. I think I get that, now.” She brought a finger to her mouth, nibbling at the edge of a fingernail. “Darien, I accidentally shot Dean Winchester.”

The other end of the line fell silent for a minute and then exploded into colorful cursing in a mix of Spanish and English.

“What happened, _Cazita_?”

Tammy went over the events of the hunt as succinctly as she could. Her stomach rolled as she described the way Dean went down after she pulled the trigger.

“Are you sure it was your bullet that hit him? If that thing you were hunting is as fast as you say, maybe it took him down.”

“I don’t know, Darien. I don’t. I ran when it happened. What else was I supposed to do? They have a reputation for shooting first and asking questions later.”

“Okay, okay. Let me get my buds together. We’ll be there in a few hours.”

“That sounds good. Thanks, Darien.”

Darien’s buds went by the names of Luis and Angelo. Tammy sighed a breath of relief when they arrived at her door. These three had saved her butt more than once and she knew them considerably better than the Winchesters.

“Have you been back to the place it all happened?” Darien asked as soon as they came through the door.

“Not yet. I’ve been monitoring their motel room. They haven’t been back.” She turned a laptop around with a view from a camera pointed at a row of motel room doors. Darien sat at the table while the others dumped duffle bags on the beds.

“How long has it been?”

“Six hours.”

He scowled and tapped through a few frames on the computer.

“We need to know if they’re still there, maybe injured but alive,” he said, looking up. “That’s a best case scenario, but we better check it out. Luis, Angelo, you two go check it out. I’m gonna see if I can remember how to access traffic cams.”

Tammy hurried to write the address on a piece of paper and the other two left on their errand. She stared at Darien, typing away at the computer for a moment.

“Darien...what if this isn’t best case scenario? What if I killed Dean Winchester?”

Darien paused for a moment and then looked up, a worried crease between his dark, dark brown eyes.

“Then we hunt the most dangerous prey of all, Cazita. We hunt Sam Winchester and the angel Castiel before they can hunt you.”

<<>>

Sam trailed behind Dean as the elder Winchester stomped into the library where he scowled at Castiel’s body sprawled in a chair, head lolling at an uncomfortable angle. He stalked across the room and dragged the angel up and over his shoulder. To his surprise, his friend didn’t seem to weigh as much as he had at other times he’d had to support the angel’s weight.

“You could have at least laid him out on a table,” he groused at Sam as he carried Cas toward the room that Kevin had used, once upon a time. 

“Yeah, because the comfort of a comatose angel was foremost in my mind while you and Omega beat the shit out of each other and destroyed your room,” Sam said, hurrying to catch up to him. Dean just grunted and deposited Cas on the bed. He pulled an arm out that had ended up bent at an awkward angle and straightened the angel’s legs out. Sam hung back in the doorway, watching him.

“You know he gave you permission, right?” Sam said as Dean stared down at the angel with that guilt-laden crease between his eyebrows. “When the Campbell cure didn’t work and you went after him, you held back. You locked it down until he offered and that’s when you bit him.”

“Does it matter, Sammy?” Dean shook his head and rubbed at his temple. “I would have bitten him anyway. I was losing control, fast. The blood lust isn’t just a craving. It’s like a drive. A need. Trying to keep from feeding is like trying to keep from breathing. I don’t think I can do it, Sammy.”

Omega appeared beside Sam in the doorway. The vampire looked like a child next to the younger Winchester, with the top of his head no higher than Sam’s shoulders. 

“How many people look at you and assume you’re harmless, blood sucker? I bet you’ve got plenty experience using that to your advantage,” Dean said crossing the room to pull a chair over beside the bed.

“We all cater to our strengths,” Omega said, stepping into the room. “We need to talk. Why don’t you let your friend rest?”

“I’m not going anywhere until I see Cas is okay with my own eyes,” Dean said with a stubborn set to his jaw. Omega gave Sam a beseeching look but he just shrugged. He didn’t have a special unlock sequence for Dean’s pig-headedness. No one did.

“You shouldn’t stay in here. You’ll need to feed again soon and you could hurt him,” Omega said.

“I’m fine and I’m not moving.” Dean sat in the chair, glaring at Cas’s prone body and ignoring the lurkers in the doorway.

“Fine. On your head be it,” Omega growled. He turned and stalked off. Sam stared at Dean for a second, but he knew better than to try to talk sense into his brother in this state.

“I’ll be in the library. Maybe there’s something else that can fix this. Remember when I was infected with the Darkness? There’s always a cure.” 

“Yeah, Sammy. You do that,” Dean said, but his voice didn’t hold much hope. Sam stared at him for another minute and then retreated to the library.


	7. Chapter 7

Castiel’s eyes opened on the ceiling of the room Kevin had used when he was still alive. A quick pang of regret flushed through the angel’s chest at the thought. He turned his head to find Dean slouched in a chair, head resting in one hand, eyes closed.

“Dean?” Cas shifted and those green eyes opened. A low growl escaped Dean’s throat and he bared his fangs. His eyes didn’t recognize Cas, only food. He lunged for the angel, shoving him back into the bed and darting in toward his throat.

Cas threw up an arm to stave him off. An involuntary shout escaped his mouth. Omega appeared behind Dean as though he had wings of his own. He wrenched the Winchester off of Cas and shoved him back down into the chair.

“I warned you not to stay in here with him,” he snarled at the thrashing, snapping Dean. Sam appeared in the doorway behind them and went to Cas when he was certain Omega had Dean under control.

“Hey, you okay, Cas?” He helped the angel sit up. Cas frowned at Dean, growling and glaring up at his progenitor.

“What happened? The last thing I remember is Dean feeding on me.”

“Yeah, and he tried to convince me to kill him because of it,” Sam said. Cas ripped his gaze off of Dean and glared up at the younger Winchester.

“No! I bared my throat for him willingly.”

“Yeah. I know. Omega knows. But…Dean is Dean. Ya know?” Sam cast a worried look at the pair of vampires beside the bed. Should he try to get Cas out of there? Should he try to get himself out of there?

“Yes,” Cas said with a sigh. “Dean often thinks little of how much we value him and chooses instead to dwell on his failings.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Sam muttered. Dean’s thrashing had calmed into angry jerks and while he still glared at Omega, his eyes held recognition again.

“In the early days of your transition, you will know little more than hunger and exhaustion,” Omega said in a low voice. “You will sleep and you will feed. It is in this time that unsupervised young vampires will unwittingly kill their family and friends. A single, well managed feeding will not kill a healthy human, but the human body only replaces blood volume so fast. The more often you feed on the same person, the more likely you are to kill them.”

Cas frowned and did a quick, internal assessment.

“I am not human,” he said, interrupting the glaring vampires. Two sets of angry eyes turned on him. “My natural healing ability has already replaced the lost blood. I am fine.”

Dean’s angry scowl cleared into surprise and more than a little relief. Omega’s eyes narrowed with speculation.

“Are you saying you could open a vein whenever needed and never come to harm?” Omega asked, pushing away from Dean.

“Well…yes. I doubt that I would enjoy spending so much time unconscious if Dean must feed each time I wake, but I could do it.” Cas stared up at the vampire with a face empty of all guile. Omega sat beside him on the bed and reached for his arm.

“May I?”

“Uh…yes?”

Omega lifted the angel’s hand and brought his wrist to his mouth. Pushing back the layers of dress shirt, jacket and trench coat, he scored the edge of Cas’s wrist with a fang, drawing a line of blood. A violent snarl ripped out of Dean’s chest and he lunged for Omega, at once feral and furious. The vampire caught him by the throat, holding him at bay while he licked the blood away, finding the flesh underneath already knitting together.

Dean lashed out and scored three long slashes down Omega’s face with his longer reach. The older vampire surged up off the bed and drove Dean to the ground with a snarl.

“I know he’s yours! I have no designs on his blood, but I needed to know something that you cannot yet understand!” They struggled on the floor, snarling and growling. Sam came around the bed, calling Dean’s name and ready to punch him again if need be. Cas slid off the bed and knelt next to the struggling vampires.

“Dean. Dean!” The angel reached out and gripped Dean’s shoulder. Dean collapsed back, recognition flooding his face again as he focused on the familiar features of his best friend. “I am fine. I am not harmed.”

Dean glanced from him to Omega and back again. His brows drew down as his face hardened into a stubborn scowl.

“Never touch Cas again. Or Sam. They’re...they’re…” Dean flinched away from where the line of thought was taking him, but Omega nodded with understanding.

“They’re yours. I know. Their blood belongs to you and you do not choose to share it with me. In my world, ownership laws are sacrosanct. I recognize your claim and honor it.” Omega pulled himself to his feet and Dean sat up, glaring up at him.

“I don’t own them,” he growled.

“You may not own them in that you consider them property or expect them to do as you say,” Omega said and off to the side, Sam snorted with derision. Dean shot him a warning look and Omega ignored them as he went on, “but you claim rights to their blood and will defend them from anyone else that tries to bleed them.”

“I’ve always done that,” Dean said, getting to his feet.

“No doubt, but before, you claimed them as friends and family in a purely human sense. Now, you are a vampire and every iota of your being will scream out to protect them if anything threatens to take them from you, sometimes to the detriment of your better judgement.”

“Still not anything new,” Sam said, crossing his arms. Omega gave him an exasperated look and shook his head.

“This is all beside the point. The reason I tasted Cas was to see if his healing ability replaced all parts of the blood or just the plasma.” The vampire glanced down at Cas, one eyebrow raised. “It seems that it does. You aren’t even anemic.”

“So...what does that mean?” Sam asked, thinking he might know, but not daring to hope.

“It means that Dean could theoretically take all of his sustenance from Cas and not need to feed on anyone else.”

“No.” Dean glared at all of them. “Cas has better things to do than follow me around to be a walking blood bag.”

“Dean, perhaps you should let me make that determination,” Cas said.

“You already said you didn’t want to spend all of your time knocked out.”

“Dean, if you need me, I am here.”

The two of them stared at each other until Sam shifted uncomfortably. Dean flushed and looked away.

“Dean, think about it!” Sam said, catching his brother’s attention. “Cas doesn’t have to follow you around. You can pray for him when you need him and he can fly to you from anywhere in the country...or the world.”

“Yeah, and spend a couple of hours passed out, only to wake up right when I’m hungry again. Not happening, Sam.”

“Over time, the frequency of your hunger and the length of his reaction to your venom will both lessen drastically,” Omega interjected.

“You, stay out of this!” Dean snarled, rounding on Omega. The vampire gave him a hard look and refused to back down. Glaring around at all the eyes staring at him, Dean made a disgusted sound and stalked out of the room.

“Just give him some time,” Sam said when Omega made a move to follow. “He hates being dependent on anyone. This is a big pill for him to swallow.”

“But I’m not…” Cas began and shut up when Sam gave him a quelling look.

“I let him go, before, and he attacked Cas again, without knowing if your friend would survive another feeding. I won’t let him do something he regrets because of sheer stubbornness.”

“Good luck stopping him,” Sam said, but he didn’t stop Omega when he moved to follow Dean again. Neither of them noticed that Cas had vanished from the bed behind them.

<<>>

Dean ran the tips of his fingers over the sigils carved into the walls of the bunker’s dungeon. The iron manacles hanging from their post in the wall clanked as he picked one up. He closed it around his wrist, shooting the bolt home and yanked on the chain. It snapped at the weakest link, the remaining chain clanging when it bounced off the stone wall. The broken link hit the floor, spun and then settled onto its side.

“I knew you would come here,” Cas said from the darkness on the other side of the room. Dean tilted his head to look over his shoulder, but paused the movement before he could see the angel.

“These won’t hold me,” he said, holding up the wrist with the broken shackle hanging from it. “The devil’s trap is like any other piece of floor. I can’t tie myself up and Sam won’t do it until I’m so crazy with hunger I’ll snap his neck without thinking about it.”

Dean turned, the look on his face a curious combination of hard stubbornness and desperate pleading. He pulled the bolt from the broken manacle and let it slide to the floor with a loud clang.

“You’re gonna have to do it, Cas. Tie me up. Smite me into oblivion. Drop me in a damn volcano if you have to. Just…don’t let me hurt Sam. Or you.”

“You won’t,” Cas said, moving forward into the light. “You haven’t…”

“Don’t,” Dean said, backpedaling with a hand outstretched to ward the angel off. He grit his teeth, baring his fangs. “I can smell you from here. I remember the taste of your blood. Right now, I want nothing more than to rip into you and drink you down until there’s nothing left.”

“Dean, I’m not stopping you,” Cas said, striding across the room to trap the Winchester in the corner.

“Damn it, Cas! What is it with you and Sam? We kill monsters! I’m a monster, now!”

“And I am an angel, no more human than you’ve become. I have done things that would have brought the wrath of the Winchesters down on any other angel, demon or monster, but here I am; your ally, not your prey.” Cas moved in close, invading Dean’s personal space as he had before he learned what personal space meant. “When you would have destroyed any other creature, you fought to save me. When Sam lost his soul, you petitioned Death himself to get it back. When we were monsters, you fought for us, to get us back, and we have done the same for you. What makes you think that would change, now?”

“Because there’s no cure for this. There won’t be any lore. It doesn’t exist in our world! You can’t get me back.”

“To quote a very close friend of mine, we’ll figure it out. Like we always do.”

Dean tried to lean away from Cas, but the angel had him trapped in the corner. They were so close that a deep breath would make their chests touch. His gaze traveled down to the pulse jumping in Cas’s neck and the world narrowed down to that swath of skin and the delectable scent of the blood rushing just below the surface.

Cas placed his hands on the wall on either side of Dean and leaned in until he had the Winchester pinned in place. He tilted his head, giving Dean easy access to his neck. A small, strangled sound escaped Dean’s throat.

“Here.” Omega seemed to appear out of nowhere at their side, although he’d been watching and listening for most of their conversation. Dean hissed at him and Cas’s shoulders tensed.

“Bite here.” The elder vampire’s fingers touched Castiel’s throat, tracing a line from mid-jaw to collar bone. “This is where you are least likely to pierce an important vein. I don’t know if it matters for Cas, but it would matter on any other human. You don’t want your donor to bleed out.”

The fingers touching Cas’s throat drew Dean’s attention back there, distracting him from the interruption. Baring his fangs, he ducked in toward the angel’s throat, but the angle felt awkward. He tilted his head, tried again, but it still wasn’t right. With a low growl, he fisted his hands in the lapels of Cas’s trench coat and turned them as a unit, putting the angel’s back to the wall. He brought a hand up to push Cas’s jaw up and to the side, stretching his neck in a long, clean line. The angel’s pulse jumped just below the skin and the tendon running from his clavicle to his earlobe stood out in stark relief. 

“Dean?” Castiel’s harsh, gruff voice came out tight and strained. With a soft snarl, Dean struck, sinking fangs into the tender tissue of his throat.

Dean groaned as the first wash of blood flooded his mouth. His fist tightened in the trenchcoat’s crinkled folds and pressed into Castiel’s shoulder, pinning him to the wall while he fed. Cas clenched his teeth, fighting the instinct to shove Dean away. He knew his friend didn’t intend him harm, but the fangs piercing his flesh hurt...until they didn’t. 

Like before, something happened when the venom hit his system. It killed the pain, cutting it off like an exploding star and replacing it with joy. Euphoria. For that brief time he had been fully human, he’d discovered the wide range of human emotion, what it meant to truly feel. Something about the venom Dean injected into him brought that back. Once again, he felt true happiness, joy, peace. The angel gasped and his knees buckled under the onslaught of the foreign emotions that acted like a drug in his system.

Dean caught him when he felt the angel’s knees give way. He pinned him against the wall, using the press of his body to keep him in place. This time, the blood lust abated before he’d drunk his fill. He came to full awareness with his lips pressed to Cas’s throat and fangs buried in his flesh. It felt ten kinds of wrong, but somehow right, all at the same time.

“Release him carefully,” Omega said from beside him where he’d monitored the entire feeding. “You can cause as much damage removing your fangs as you can when you first bite, sometimes more.”

Dean wanted to lash out at the vampire, curse him and tell him just where he could stuff his advice, but dammit if the little punk hadn’t been right so far. Concentrating on the press of the flesh around his fangs, he slid them free and instinctively licked the last drops of blood from the wound. He pulled away, still holding Cas upright by the grip he had on his trench. The angel’s head lolled to the side, his eyes closed. Two neat puncture wounds in the middle of a deep red and purple hickey marked his throat. Omega examined them with a critical eye.

“Neat. Very neat. Your control is already impressive.” He looked up at Dean with narrowed eyes. “Now, are you ready to listen to me?”

Dean bared his fangs at Omega, but he didn’t refuse him. He wanted to. Oh, how he wanted to, but even Dean had his limits. Sam wouldn’t destroy or cage him and neither would Cas. That left learning what he could about what he was so he wouldn’t hurt anyone he cared about.

“Fine. I’ll listen, but I’m putting Cas in his room, first.”


	8. Chapter 8

Darien flipped through the pictures Angelo had taken of the abandoned garage. He had found the Impala in traffic cams, headed north, but lost it on a stretch of I-35 that didn’t have cameras. He had pulled the call records for the phone Tammy had thrown away. They knew that Sam had called her over twenty times, but they couldn’t access the voicemails he had left. With the pictures in his hand, it wasn’t looking good.

“That’s a lot of blood, even for someone as tall as Dean,” Angelo said, looking over Darien’s shoulder. “The pictures don’t do it justice. Assuming some of it soaked into his clothes...he has to be dead, man.”

“Maybe. Dean Winchester has ‘died’ more times than I can count, but you’re right. It doesn’t look good...and it might be worse for Tammy if he did survive. Dean eats, sleeps and breathes revenge. More than his brother.” Darien set the pictures down and looked up. “We can’t take the chance. Tammy, you’re going to a safe house in Mexico. My family there will take care of you. We’ll go after the Winchesters.”

Tammy bit her lip, but she didn’t argue. Nothing Darien had said was wrong. She only hoped her mistake didn’t get her friends killed.

<<>>

When Castiel clawed his way back to consciousness again, his eyes opened to find Sam perched in the chair beside the bed, a stack of creaky old tomes on the table next to him and one open in his lap. The angel frowned and glanced around the room.

“Where’s Dean?”

Sam looked up and closed the book.

“Ah...sleeping. He finally broke down and listened to Omega. They didn’t get much talking done before Dean fell asleep, but it’s a start. How do you feel?”

Castiel turned his attention inward to find most of the blood Dean had taken already restored. He expended a touch of grace to repair the bite and replace the last of the missing blood.

“I’m fine. How are you? Has there been any news of Jack?”

Sam scowled as a guilty pang shot through his gut. With Dean getting turned into some strange, new type of vampire and dealing with the fall out, he had almost forgotten their missing charge. How could he just forget about Jack like that?

“Uh…no. I haven’t heard anything, although I should probably check my email.”

Cas nodded, oblivious to the guilty pause in Sam’s reply. He sat up and swung his legs off of the bed.

“I should reach out to those of my brothers I dared to contact. If they reached out to me while I was unconscious, they may believe I simply ignored them.”

Cas closed his eyes and his brow creased in concentration. Sam scowled, feeling suddenly like an unwelcome addition to the angel’s efforts to contact his brethren.

“Eh…sure. Okay. I’ll just be in the library.”

He rose and retreated to said library, guilt roiling in his stomach. He pulled out his laptop and opened his email, but not with much hope. Anyone who had news about Jack would most likely call him directly, but that didn’t ease the guilt. He should have been doing something…anything to find Jack. Maybe he could call around again, see if anyone had any new information. Even a hint would give them a direction to look.

“I need to feed.”

Sam jerked with surprise and looked up at Omega as he stepped into the library. He blinked at the vampire and swallowed hard as the import of his words sank in. He glanced around the room, as though another person that Omega could feed on might magically appear, but the only options in the bunker were himself and Cas. Turning back, he opened his mouth, but Omega shook his head before he could speak.

“Not you. Dean has made it clear that you and the angel are off limits, even if you were fully willing. I’m not a fool. To some degree, I’m a prisoner here, and that’s fine because Dean needs me, but I do need blood. I can hunt for myself, but I don’t know what claim or protections you lay to the humans in the vicinity.”

Sam scowled. He didn’t like the idea of Omega ‘hunting’ anyone. They were supposed to protect humans from the monsters, not offer them up like a living sacrifice.

“I could get some bagged blood from the local hospital…”

Omega shook his head.

“The anticoagulants required to store blood ruins it. Our bodies reject foreign substances and I would only vomit it back up again. There is very little a vampire of my type can keep down besides fresh human blood and small amounts of water.”

“So, you knew Dean wouldn’t be able to keep my cure down.” Sam leveled a dark glare at the vampire. Omega shrugged.

“I didn’t know what was in your ‘cure’. I suspected something like that might happen, and I did warn you it probably wouldn’t work, but…you needed hope that he could be brought back. I needed you calm and cooperative so I could concentrate on helping Dean through the transition. I didn’t withhold my suspicions maliciously.”

Sam narrowed his eyes at Omega. He’d been manipulated and he hated it, but he couldn’t argue with the vampire’s logic.

“A lie of omission is still a lie.” Omega turned at the sound of Castiel’s voice. The angel entered the library with a dark glare similar to Sam’s. “You deceived Sam, regardless of your intent.”

Omega bared his fangs at the angel, but he backed off as Castiel drew near.

“I’m sorry. I only suspected the cure wouldn’t work. It was still worth a try.”

“Cas, it doesn’t matter.” Sam stood and inserted himself between the angel and the vampire. Cas stopped and glowered up at him. “None of it matters, now. Did you hear anything about Jack?”

“Possibly,” Cas said, cutting a narrow glare at Omega. “One of my contacts is willing to meet, but they’re anxious. They won’t show if anyone else is with me.”

Sam sighed, and sat back in front of his computer.

“I guess that’s a bust, then. You can’t leave Dean…”

“Sam, I swore I would protect this boy,” Cas said with a beseeching look. “I must do this. If you need me back here sooner than expected, all you need to do is call.”

“Oh…yeah. Of course.” Sam frowned down at his computer, wracking his mind for a way to get blood for Omega without leaving Dean alone.

“What? What is it?” Cas asked.

“I need to feed,” Omega spoke up, “and Sam cannot act as jailer and caring brother at the same time.” His voice held an edge of bitterness and Cas cocked his head to the side.

“I can take care of that,” the angel said, crossing the space between himself and the vampire in a couple of strides. He pressed his palm into Omega’s sternum and the vampire collapsed to his knees with a surprised shout. Sam stood, eyes wide, but what he thought he could do, he couldn’t have said.

“Cas, what did you do?”

“I marked him. It’s similar to the warding on your ribs, but in the other direction. I can find him anywhere in the world, now, and I’ll be aware of his activities in the back of my mind at all times. I will take him to feed and make sure he doesn’t kill anyone.”

“I have no intention of killing anyone,” Omega grumbled, glaring up at Cas as he wrapped an arm around his chest.

“That remains to be seen,” Cas said, one eyebrow arched in doubt.

“What about your contact?” Sam asked. 

“I will leave Omega to feed while I meet with them,” he said and then turned his attention to Omega. “If you kill or maim anyone while I’m gone, I will know and I will smite you again. I will smite you until your insides boil, if I must, and then I will slice you into manageable pieces and box you up in separate containers until we return here.”

Omega glared defiance up at the angel, but the corners of his eyes tightened with real fear and respect. He looked away first and nodded his compliance. Sam blinked and made a mental note to send Cas in first the next time they went hunting. Dean might still be human if they’d done that against Omega to begin with.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A chunk of this chapter is borrowed from the show and that’s on purpose. Omega is just a wrench in the works. The other events in Season 13 are still happening.

Castiel pulled up in front of an isolated dive bar off of the freeway. Omega eyed the entrance with distaste, but reached for the handle of the Inverness green 67 Mercury Cougar that Dean had picked up for the Winchesters to use when they needed a second car. They mostly took it for grocery runs so the engine wouldn’t rot, but they had made it clear that Castiel was welcome to use it since his Lincoln had ended up in a junk yard where they couldn’t retrieve it without proof of ownership.

“I will return before midnight,” the angel said. “If anyone is dead...”

“You’ll smite me into next week. I know.” Omega huffed as he slid out of the car and slammed the door behind him. Cas pulled out of the parking lot with a spew of gravel and the vampire headed for the door.

As soon as he stepped inside, a bouncer blocked his path, arms crossed and eyes narrowed. Omega glared up at the towering mass of muscle that would make even Sam seem short by comparison and resisted the urge to bare his fangs at the man.

“Hey, kid. If you’re looking for your parents, you give me a name and I’ll ask around, but you can’t come in. No minors allowed.”

Omega sighed and dug a wallet out of his back pocket.

“I’m not a kid,” he said, pulling out a Texas drivers license. The date of birth on the fake ID put him at eighteen years old. He couldn’t stomach alcohol, so there wasn’t any point in trying to pass for drinking age. The bouncer took the card from him and squinted at it with a suspicious scowl. Omega schooled his features into a belligerent, but otherwise innocent look. Finally, the bouncer pulled out a massive black permanent marker and drew a black X on the back of Omega’s hand.

“You cause any trouble and you’re out on your ass.”

“Duly noted,” Omega said, taking the license back and stalking inside. For appearance sake, he ordered a soda at the bar and made his way to the pool table. He leaned against the wall and surveyed the room, mentally marking likely targets. 

He dismissed the bar tender and the waitress immediately. They would be missed while they slept off the effects of his venom and as much as he would like to bring the bouncer down a peg or two, he had to mark him off for the same reason.

There was one female customer in the place and she glared death at any man that dared to approach her as she nursed her tumbler of whiskey. The two college toughs trying to hustle pool would miss each other if one disappeared for a couple of hours, but the guy losing to them might work. He had an air of sad desperation about him and no one else seemed to know him.

Omega was eyeing him and plotting how to get him alone when he noticed a pair of hungry eyes watching him from a booth on the other side of the room. The man wore a beaten ball cap with a logo that matched the feeder of the semi truck parked outside. He knocked back a swig of his beer and licked his lips as his eyes travelled down Omega’s body. A thumb stroked the neck of the beer bottle, sliding over the smooth glass and circling the mouth suggestively. His gaze worked its way back up the vampire’s body and their eyes met. Omega arched an eyebrow at him and tilted his head toward the door. The trucker swallowed hard and dug in his pocket for a wad of cash to leave on the table for his beer. He gave Omega the barest nod and headed for the door. Omega gave him a couple of minutes lead time before he followed him. Perfect.

<<>>

When Castiel returned, he had company. The man with him exuded an air of frustrated desperation that clashed with the obnoxious arrogance he wore like a second skin. His eyes shifted around the bar, suspicious and angry. 

Omega watched them out of the corner of his eye as they took a seat on the far side of the bar. The trucker had long since slept off his venom and headed on his way, a pint or two low on blood and with a subliminal suggestion that nothing had happened. 

Castiel didn’t acknowledge the vampire with so much as a glance, so Omega kept his distance. Something seemed off about the angel. Whatever he had learned tonight did not sit well with him and Omega couldn’t decide whether he wanted to get involved or not.

Pretending to nurse the drink in front of him, he mentally sorted through the music and voices in the bar to zero in on what the pair were saying.

“Will you…will you do me a favor and stop looking at the door every five seconds like you wanna get outta here?”

“You’ll forgive me if I’m a little on edge,” Cas said, leaning forward with a narrow look. “The last time we were together you killed me.”

Omega lifted an eyebrow at that tidbit of information, but Castiel was an angel. He’d never met an angel in his own world. Who knew what they were capable of? Maybe returning from their version of death wasn’t unusual.

The most he could glean from the following conversation was that this other person must be an angel as well, but not an ally. Not really. Maybe a necessary evil, but not someone to trust, and he believed something big, bad and dangerous was on its way to destroy this world. Omega scowled. Could it be the thing that brought him here? Maybe. Not that it mattered. He had no intention of destroying the Winchesters at this point, so the odds of going home were slim and none. If something threatened this world, it threatened him as well.

“Work this out with me. Hypothetically, um, let’s say you’re lying, and I help you find your son, and then you kill me again.” Castiel narrowed his eyes at the man sitting across from him and every line of his body conveyed barely controlled hostility.

“Cut me a little bit of slack. Please?,” his companion said, gesturing toward the ceiling as though a higher power might step in to convince the angel if he just pleaded hard enough. “That unhinged thing and that meth head Kevin Tran are about to bust through that door. God isn’t here! It’s just us. We’re all we got, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Castiel sighed and sat back in his chair. Omega tensed. Was he actually considering working with this creature?

“Well, I-I-I have to talk to Sam and Dean.”

Omega relaxed as the stranger dropped his head to the table in defeat, but it quickly became apparent that the man wasn’t going to allow Castiel to contact the Winchesters and he had some kind of hold over the angel. For whatever reason, he continued listening to him and Omega scowled into his drink, wondering what, if anything, he should do. Castiel knew he was there. He must know Omega could hear them, but he still hadn’t acknowledged the vampire.

Tired of waiting while Cas listened to the arrogant asshole, Omega rose and made his way across the bar to the table. Cas looked up as he drew near and he huffed an exasperated sigh.

“Maybe we should just head back,” Omega said, glaring down at the stranger. The man looked him over with cool assessment.

“And who, exactly are you?”

“A friend. Who are you?”

The stranger smirked.

“Lucifer, King of Lies. Although, ya know I don’t really lie. I just…deliver the truth creatively.”

Omega lifted an eyebrow at the name. He knew it, of course, but he’d always thought of the devil as a religious construct meant to keep the less ethical in check. He might have been more impressed with the fallen angel if he hadn’t exuded more bluster than menace. Dismissing the devil with a flick of his eyes, he turned to Cas. 

“I agree with you. Sam and Dean should be consulted about whatever you’ve been discussing, especially considering…recent events.”

“Recent events? What recent events?”

Omega ignored Lucifer and stared down at Cas, trying to convey without words that he wanted to help with whatever was going wrong, and if something other than guile held Cas hostage in this bar, he would help with that, too. He didn’t like the angel, and he didn’t hold any illusions that Cas liked him, but he didn’t have to like someone to ally with them. It just helped.

Cas sighed and his eyes slid to Lucifer with an expression of strained patience.

“Does this have anything to do with my son?” Lucifer said, his eyes narrowing. The bluster fell away and Omega caught a slight glimpse of what made the devil a source for fear. Reassessing his original impression of the fallen angel, he took a step closer to Cas and Lucifer glanced at him with a knowing smirk.

“Jack! Your son’s name is Jack,” Cas said, sitting forward and glaring at the devil. Omega lifted an eyebrow at his vehemence and tucked the reaction away in the back of his head as a tidbit of information to consider, later.

“Jack. Wow. Is he awesome? I mean, is he a chip off the old block?”

Omega rolled his eyes and sighed as Cas hedged his answers and Lucifer worked his way to the conclusion that the Winchesters and their angel had no more idea where this Jack person was than he did. From there, the conversation petered off into a series of sniping insults and Lucifer complaining about the Winchester influence on his son. 

Bored with the whole proceeding, Omega stalked toward the pool table, now unmanned since the hustlers had gone home with their take. Most of the place had cleared out by this time and the bar tender washed glasses and wiped down surfaces, casting alternating irritated and exasperated looks at the angels that refused to leave and let him close up early. The vampire found a seat at the far end of the bar and shook his head when the man headed his way with a defeated look. Smiling gratefully, the bar tender headed out into the room, wiping down tables to hint that Cas and Lucifer might want to head on out if they weren’t going to order anything. Instead, the pair migrated to the bar itself, Castiel still scowling and Lucifer still complaining.

Omega sighed and watched them bicker like brothers, drumming his fingers against the pitted wood of the bar. He’d just about decided enough was enough and he could walk back to the bunker when a deafening crash of thunder pierced his eardrums and the doors of the bar flew open. A distinguished gentleman dressed all in white with a salt and pepper beard and mustache stood with hands clasped behind his back and a gloating smirk on his face. Men and women in black suits followed him, the ones on the edges entering first and standing to attention like an honor guard.

Cas stood, brow creased with consternation and a touch of panic. Lucifer glanced over his shoulder, assessed the new comers and then turned his back on them as though he considered them of no consequence, but his face belied the relaxed set of his shoulders. 

The gentleman sauntered into the room, eyeing the bartender. He raised a hand and snapped his fingers. The man exploded into dust and Lucifer flinched. Omega slid off his chair, every sense suddenly on high alert. 

“Hey, man.” Lucifer nodded over his shoulder as though the instant annihilation of a full grown human was an everyday occurrence. The gentleman’s gaze flicked over the room and landed on Omega. He lifted his hand and snapped again. Pain ripped down the vampire’s spine, curling in his gut and sizzling down the nerves of every extremity. He collapsed in place with an agonized shout. It had felt similar when Cas smote him, but unlike the smiting, the pain blew through and then disappeared again in a flash. A strong hand gripped his upper arm and he blinked in surprise to find Castiel bent over him.

“Are you okay?” the angel asked as Lucifer and the gentleman he referred to as Asmodeus exchanged thinly veiled hostile pleasantries.

“I’m fine,” Omega said, getting to his feet with the angel’s help.

“Good. Stay close.”

“I see you must’ve taken over Crowley’s spot? Yeah,” Lucifer said, still trying for cool calm, but only a fool would fall for his act. “That’s okay. You can stand down, now. Skipper’s back!” 

“Well, here’s the thing, Lou,” Asmodeus said, stepping forward. “I’m real satisfied with my current position. Hell is humming along quite nicely, thank you. But I do hope you and your little lap angel will pay me a visit.”

Castiel moved up, eyeing Asmodeus with belligerence. The demon glanced at him and his eyes flickered over Omega, still intact and standing. Those eyes narrowed a little, but then dismissed the vampire as unimportant as he turned back to Lucifer. The devil turned, a sneer curling his lips.

“Yes, well…see, that’s the thing. We’re all booked up, buddy.”

“Oh, I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer,” said the demon. Lucifer had reached for Cas as though he would escort him out, but the demon’s defiance brought him around, the fear that tightened the corners of his eyes morphing into anger.

“Now you know better than to screw with me, Asmodeus,” Lucifer said in a low, dangerous voice.

“Oh, I knew better than to screw with the old you.” The demon didn’t seem terribly impressed by Lucifer’s bravado. “But this new version seems a little more…screwable.”

Lucifer pressed his lips together and breathed deep, shrugging his shoulders to loosen them. As his shoulders relaxed, the irises of his eyes glowed a bright, cherry red. Omega unconsciously bared his fangs at the devil.

“So help me,” the devil said with a threatening shake of his head.

“Aw, please,” Asmodeus said, singularly unimpressed. He raised a hand and flicked a finger at Lucifer.

A wall of force threw the fallen angel behind the bar and tossed Cas into Omega. They went down in a tangle of red hair and trench coat. The demons bracketing Asmodeus rushed forward, intent on capturing the devil, the angel and the vampire for their master.


	10. Chapter 10

Sam slid another useless ancient tome back onto the bookshelf. He had hoped something in the Men of Letters library would have information about what Omega and now, Dean, were, but like most of the alternate dimensions they’d been dealing with since Jack made his appearance, there wasn’t any lore. With nothing to go on, his hands were tied and Cas should have been back already.

Scowling at the staircase that led to the bunker’s outer door, he fished his phone out of his pocket and dialed Cas’s number. It picked up on the second ring.

“Sam.”

“Hey, Cas. I thought you’d be back by now. Please tell me Omega didn’t kill anyone.” That death would be on his head, one of many, but the ones that resulted from a betrayal of trust hit him the hardest.

“No death, but he’s run off. I’m tracking him, now.”

Sam frowned.

“I thought you marked him so you can find him.”

“I did, but he found a way to muddy its effects. I’ll keep you updated.”

Cas hung up and Sam pulled the phone away from his ear with a quizzical look. The angel wasn’t necessarily known for his witty repertoire, but that was short, even for him. Something felt wrong, like an itch between his shoulder blades that he couldn’t quite reach. The bunker felt stifling and he paused for a moment to listen for the rumble of the generators that cycled air through the facility. They chugged along in the background, a constant noise he usually filtered out. 

Shrugging off the oppressive atmosphere, he slipped his phone back in his pocket and turned, again, to the wall of books. He pulled down another tome that might at least have some suggestion of how he could start trying to find a way to get Dean’s humanity back, but when he sat at the table and opened it, he couldn’t focus. Shouldn’t Dean be awake by now? What would he do if he was? With Cas off chasing after Omega, could Dean keep the blood lust in check until the angel got back?

“Hey. Where’d everybody go?”

Sam looked up to see Dean, leaning against the frame of the arch that led from the library to the map room. The elder Winchester looked drawn and pale, the redness around his eyes reminiscent of a hangover after a particularly indulgent bender. 

“Ah…MIA. Omega claimed he needed to feed, so Cas took him out, but they haven’t been back. I just talked to Cas. He sounded weird, but said Omega gave him the slip and he’s tracking him.”

“Son of a bitch!” Dean slammed his fist into the arch and the wood groaned with the strike, a slight dent appearing where his knuckles had impacted. “I knew we couldn’t trust him!”

Sam frowned at the damage Dean had left behind.

“Uh…you might want to be careful about punching walls, now. You couldn’t put a dent in that, before. The infrastructure took enough damage when we had to blow a hole to that sewer main. Let’s not bring the place down around us.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Dean muttered, rubbing at his knuckles as he moved into the room to join Sam at the table. “Did Cas give you any idea when he’d be back?”

Sam shook his head, smoothing a hand over the page of the book in front of him as he sat back in his chair. He studied his brother, the knot in his stomach tightening further at the way Dean glanced at him, gaze a little south of his face, and then looked back at the table.

“How are you holding up? You look…well, honestly, you look like shit.”

“Thanks,” Dean grumbled shooting a glare at him. Sam put his hands up in surrender.

“Hey, no offense meant. You just…are you gonna make it until Cas gets back? I would try to get you some blood bags or something, but Omega said you guys can’t keep it down.”

“He was probably lying,” Dean said, ripping his gaze away from Sam’s throat again. He stood, shoving the chair back and paced away from the table. “Just wanted an excuse to get out of here.”

“You know, that’s weird,” Sam said, some of the source of his wariness clicking into place. “I mean, he mentioned he knew he was sort of a prisoner here, but he said he didn’t mind; said he was okay with it since he had to take care of you.”

Dean rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“I can take care of myself. He was just buttering you up so you’d let him out.”

“No. He could have left at any time,” Sam said, scowling down at the book. “Well, Cas probably could have stopped him, but Cas was leaving anyway. He had to talk to someone. If Omega really wanted out, it would have been easier to wait for Cas to leave and then just leave, himself. I couldn’t have stopped him.”

“Who was Cas talking to?”

“A contact. About Jack.” Sam shrugged. “We couldn’t have gone with him anyway. Whoever he was talking to doesn’t like strangers.”

“Yeah, I bet.” Dean stood beside the table, his tone absent and his eyes riveted right back on Sam’s neck. With a start, he snapped out of it and rubbed a palm over his face.

“I can’t think like this, Sammy. All I can think about is the smell of your blood, and…whatever. Why don’t you make a run to the hospital for some blood? It can’t hurt to try.”

“You sure you’ll be okay here alone?”

“I’m a big boy, mommy,” Dean growled, baring his fangs at Sam. “I’ll be fine and if you don’t get your butt out of here, it’s your blood I’m gonna be guzzling down.”

Sam pressed his lips together and narrowed his eyes, but he knew better than to argue when Dean got snippy. Instead, he just stood and headed for his room to retrieve the white coat and fake ID that had let him access the hospital blood bank he had used the last time they needed a supply. At least he wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of getting it blessed this time.

<<>>

Lebanon wasn’t big enough to have its own hospital. There were a couple within a half hour drive, but Sam hesitated to raid them in case they ever had to use them for an injury obtained in the bunker. The place had been infiltrated enough times that he couldn’t afford to dismiss the possibility and they did not need to end up in a hospital where someone might recognize their faces as something other than a patient. That being the case, he drove almost a full hour to find a place he felt comfortable hitting up. By the time he got the blood and got back, over two hours had passed and he had no idea what he’d find when he opened the bunker door.

Hating that he even needed to think about it, he retrieved his favorite machete from the cache in the trunk of the Impala. He usually preferred the range that a gun gave him, but he suspected a bullet wouldn’t stop something like what Dean had become. If Omega could be believed, neither would a beheading, but even a leviathan couldn’t do much when they lost their head until they got it back.

Setting the cooler of blood in front of the steel door that led from the garage to the rest of the bunker, he adjusted his grip on the machete and opened the door. He found an empty corridor on the other side and nothing seemed out of place.

“Dean?”

No one answered, but that didn’t have to mean anything. His voice would only carry so far through the labyrinthine corridors. Keeping an eye out, he stooped to pick up the cooler and slid through the door, machete in one hand and blood in the other.

He found Dean in the library, pacing. His brother paused when Sam rounded the corner and for a moment, it wasn’t Dean looking out of those green eyes, but the thirst for blood that now ruled him. A low growl trickled out of his throat and Sam lifted the machete in warning.

“Don’t, Dean.”

Dean blinked and straightened up out of the crouch he’d eased into. His eyes flicked to the light reflecting off the blade in Sam’s hand and a small smile curved his lips.

“Smart. That’s my Sammy.”

“Yeah. Whatever.” Sam hurried into the room and set the cooler on a table. Flipping it open, he pulled a bag out. “I…uh…didn’t know if you’d have a type preference so I just grabbed a variety of the ones about to expire.”

Dean’s eyes locked onto the viscous red fluid in the clear bag and his mouth opened, lips skinning back to bare his fangs. He almost lunged for the bag, but caught himself. Closing his eyes, he took a calming breath.

“I wouldn’t know yet, anyway. Only tasted one kind so far,” he said, opening his eyes again. “You, ah, might want to prep a syringe of dead man’s blood. Just in case.”

Sam shook his head. “You don’t remember? Stuff doesn’t work. Not on you.”

Dean scowled and looked around the room.

“Better tie me down, then. Last time I drank something I couldn’t keep down, I attacked Cas.”

“Yeah, no. I don’t think it’s a good idea to get that close to you right now,” Sam said, painfully aware that Dean’s gaze had come back to rest on his throat instead of his face. He tossed the bag of blood at the end of the table, closer to his brother, and Dean’s eyes latched onto it. “Just drink the blood.”

“At least lock yourself in your room or something,” Dean huffed, but he edged closer to the bag of blood, never taking his eyes off of it.

“Okay. Yeah. That sounds like a good idea.” Sam said, easing back slowly, careful not to make any sudden moves. “Just let me know when you’re done.” Dean snatched the blood bag up as Sam edged out of sight and sprinted toward his room.

Dean ignored his brother’s retreat, attention riveted on the object in his hand. He tried to hold back, tried to control himself, but time blinked out and he found himself tearing into the plastic, guzzling its contents down. It tasted odd, like a burger dug out of a dumpster or beer that had gone flat sitting in the sun. The stuff hit his stomach like a swallow of lead shot and curdled there for a moment before nausea ripped through him. He dropped to the ground, heaving and gagging. His body convulsed and the blood poured back out of his mouth, splashing and pooling on the stone tiles.

It seemed like he spent an eternity on that floor, heaving up every last drop of bagged blood. Chills wracked his limbs and he collapsed in the pool of regurgitated blood, shivering and shuddering. There had to be more blood seeping across the floor than he’d swallowed. Hunger like he hadn’t known since the days he gave up his own meals to make sure Sammy could eat curdled in his stomach.

The stench of the regurgitated bagged blood stung his nostrils. Had he been able to smell it through the plastic, he wouldn’t have touched the stuff. Gagging, he pushed away from the puddle, but the smell followed him, clinging to where it had soaked into his shirts. Cursing, he yanked the offending clothing off over his head and stumbled to his feet, wiping at the film of disgusting blood left behind on his skin.

With distance between the pool of blood and his sensitive nose, he picked up another smell, recent but fading. It smelled…right. It smelled…delicious. Forgetting the film of filth on his skin and the stench of the unclean blood all over the floor, he followed that delectable scent out of the library, down a corridor, to a closed door. He tried the knob, the thought of knocking or calling out never crossing his mind. In this state, higher thought took a back seat to the hunger at the wheel.

Of course the door was locked. Behind it, Sam crouched, machete at the ready, hoping, praying to a god he knew wouldn’t answer, that he wouldn’t have to use the blade on his brother. Fleetingly, he wondered where Castiel was, because he’d included the angel in his prayers, but there wasn’t time to ponder their friend’s location or disposition. When the doorknob wouldn’t turn, a heavy blow made the door shudder and the wood groaned. A hairline crack appeared down the middle of the thin wood panels. They really should think about replacing the doors with something more solid.

A second blow and a third warped the door, sharp cracking sounds echoing around the room. Sam backed up, his gut in turmoil. Could he take his brother’s head off? This wasn’t like when Dean had gone demon. Dean had wanted to kill him, then. He’d reveled in the thought. This Dean…wasn’t even really Dean. This was animalistic hunger and it didn’t take a death to satiate it. Less than 48 hours ago, he’d been willing to offer up his own throat if the cure didn’t work. He’d said as much to Omega and he had meant it, but that had been with the older vampire there to keep Dean from accidentally doing something he would regret. Violent anger rose up in Sam’s chest at the vampire that had turned Dean and then disappeared at the first opportunity.

The door frame gave way before the door itself, sending a chunk of wood flying across the room. The warped boards, held together by chance, slammed into the wall and Dean stalked through, fangs bared. His hungry eyes swept the room and settled on Sam. He barely noticed the machete held at the ready. He rushed his brother with a hair-raising snarl. Sam brought the blade up, but his heart wasn’t in it. Dean dodged the swing with a graceful lunge and tackled Sam to the ground.

Sam took another swing at Dean and the vampire snarled, grabbing his brother by the wrist. Dean shook his arm like a dog with a toy, wrenching the machete out of his grasp. It clattered as it hit the ground and spun out of reach. Sam twisted, lunging after it but missed, hindered by Dean’s weight pinning him down. Dean grabbed a fistful of shirt, hauling Sam back and pressing him into the floor on his stomach. The shirt’s seams strained as he yanked it aside and darted down, sinking fangs into the meat of Sam’s neck, close to his shoulder.

Sam screamed and bucked, instincts howling at him to destroy the thing on his back. Dean clung to him like a limpet, gnawing at his neck, his sharp fangs ripping gouges in his flesh to get at the blood that seeped from the denser muscle tissue, rather than gushing into his mouth. He ripped his fangs out and sank them in again, just above the first bite, letting him seal his lips over the open wound he’d already made.

Sam jerked and cursed, scrabbling at the floor, trying to shove Dean off his back. The fangs in his neck burned like a branding iron and tears gathered at the corners of his eyes, more for the fact that it was his much beloved brother ripping into him than the pain itself. Dean sucked and swallowed, feeding with no thought to the body thrashing beneath him. His venom worked its way into Sam’s system and the thrashing grew gradually weaker until Sam collapsed beneath him, limbs paralyzed and the last of his desperate efforts to dislodge his brother petering off into ineffectual muscle twitches.

Dean’s awareness came back in stages. He first registered the taste of blood…good, wholesome blood this time, but not quite the same as what he’d tasted before. He swallowed one last mouthful and neatly disengaged as Omega had shown him. He pulled away, scowling at the ragged wound left behind. Memories trickled through his consciousness. Barely controlled hunger. Bagged blood. A taste he could only describe as revolting and vomiting that taste all over the bunker floor. More hunger. Stronger hunger. Smelling Sam. Chasing Sam. Sam. Sammy!

“Sammy!” Dean scrambled off of Sam’s back, rolling him over as panic unfurled in his gut. Sam’s eyelids fluttered and Dean could make out the thump of his heart, faster than he liked, but to be expected with the volume of blood he’d lost. He was alive, but unresponsive. Dean shook him and lightly slapped his cheek before he remembered that the venom would keep him out for at least a little while.

Guilt and dread spread through him, chased by a deep and irascible anger. He told Sammy to kill him! He’d begged Cas to lock him up or drop him in a volcano. The only reason he’d let them keep him around, tried learning to control the hunger, was because Omega could keep him from seriously hurting anyone, and that asshole had disappeared the first chance he got!

“Damn bleeding hearts!”

With a frustrated roar, he shot to his feet. If the fools wouldn’t listen to him, then he obviously had to take matters into his own hands.

<<>>

Sam woke to a throbbing pain in his shoulder and neck. Someone had put him in his bed. He turned his head to find a glass of water and a bottle of pain pills on his bedside table. Reaching up, he touched his neck where Dean had bitten him and found a fresh bandage covering the wound. The pain from the bite radiated down his arm on that side and into his back. Dean must have hit something more than just muscle.

“Dean?” He sat up out of bed, reaching for the pain pills with his good arm. No one answered. Swallowing two of the pills, he levered himself out of bed and went searching for his brother. After an exhaustive canvass of the echoingly empty bunker, Sam returned to his room, defeated. Dean had disappeared, but worse than his disappearance were the keys to the Impala hanging on their normal hook in the garage. Dean never left his baby behind unless he’d given her to Sam because he never intended to return. He hadn’t even left a note. He was just gone.


	11. Chapter 11

Omega grit his teeth against a scream as the scalpel sliced into his back. The demon dressed in scrubs, a butcher’s apron and safety goggles carved a long rectangle into the vampire’s flesh. Picking up a pair of blunt hemostats, he locked onto the flap of skin and ripped it off.

Omega couldn’t stop the scream that erupted from his throat. Burning pain seared down his nerves and his scream broke off into vehement curses as blood poured down his sides. The demon set the hemostats, still holding the flap of skin, in a steel dish. He picked up a clipboard and stopwatch, timing how fast the skin knitted over and reformed. Omega panted and strained against the many straps and chains holding him down, but the demons had learned their lesson after his first escape.

Sadly, he hadn’t made it far. While their blood tasted similar to the demons in his own dimension, these demons were vastly different from those he knew. He had underestimated their capacity for pain in their borrowed bodies and they walked right through his first attacks, meant to disable instead of kill. He wouldn’t make that mistake again. 

Under orders from Asmodeus to suss out what the hell he was, it hadn’t taken them long to figure out that blood loss weakened him and they had used that to their advantage. The hunger raged through him, competing with the pain for his attention. The demon clicked a button on the stopwatch, made a note on the clipboard and set it aside.

“Very interesting. You’re not from around here, are you?”

Omega ignored the question and the demon laughed.

“If you don’t like what I’m doing to you, wait until the interrogators get you. You’ll answer their questions...eventually.” Still chuckling, the demon started unbuckling the straps and chains holding Omega down. “Lucky for you, I’ve got all the data I need for now. You get a little break. We wouldn’t want you numb to the pain when your questioning begins, would we?”

Omega grit his teeth as the demon jostled his aching body. The blood lust thrummed down his nerves, magnifying the scent of blood wafting off of the demon’s vessel. His entire being cried out for sustenance, to rip into the nearest creature that bled human blood and drink his fill. He hadn’t been this depleted in years and as the last chain fell away, he surged up off the table, launching himself at the demon.

Had he been in his right mind, he wouldn’t have had the strength or stamina to attack. A sane, sentient mind will always reserve the last dregs of energy left in a body, lest the body give out entirely, but like a PCP addict, the hunger overrode that caution and he drove the demon to the ground, ripping into his throat and guzzling down the blood that poured out.

The demon fought him, able to animate the vessel even though it had suffered a fatal wound. Snarling, Omega jammed his fingers into the vessel’s rib cage, gripping the bones and ripping it open like a rotten melon. The demon howled, only partially immune to the pain ripping through his stolen body. A moment later, black smoke poured from the vessel’s mouth as the demon fled. Omega buried his face back into the ravaged neck, drinking down all that he could before the body cooled and the blood coagulated.

Rising, he wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, but only managed to smear it across his cheek and into his hair. Gore soaked his front and dripped from the hem of his shirt. Ignoring the wet cloth clinging to his skin, he stalked from the room.

Certain that anything he found in this place outside of a prison cell would deserve death, he attacked first and questioned later, assuming the demons didn’t smoke out to get away from him. By the time he found Castiel and Lucifer in their cells, he had drunk his fill. Blood soaked him from head to toe and Castiel jumped to his feet in alarm when the vampire stepped into sight on the other side of his bars.

“Cas?” Omega scowled at the angel, still feeling the effects of rapid starvation and tipsy with the influx of fresh, demon-tainted blood.

“Omega?” Castiel straightened out of the slight crouch he’d eased into. His blue eyes narrowed, examining the vampire’s familiar stance and features under the gory curtain of blood.

Omega moved up to the bars, scowling at the cell’s mediocre appearance. “After the smite you put on me, I wouldn’t expect a set of iron bars to hold you, angel.”

A raucous snicker erupted from the neighboring cell. Castiel cut a glare at the wall between his cell and the next. His lip lifted in a sneer.

“Oh, he likes it in there,” Lucifer sneered from next door. “He could have busted us out long ago, but no. He’s gotta be stingy with the Grace.”

Castiel rolled his eyes and reached out for the bars. He touched one with a single finger and the metal lit up orange, throwing off a spark where he touched it. Writing in a language Omega had never seen before covered the bars in a brighter orange and then faded with the rest of the glow.

“Angel warding,” Cas said, shaking his hand like he’d stuck it in a light socket. “Powerful angel warding. I don’t have the strength to break it.”

Omega huffed and reached for the bars himself. Nothing happened when his blood-covered hand wrapped around the cold metal. Grinning wide enough to bare his fangs, he moved down to the door. Castiel paced him on the other side of the bars, a touch of hope crossing his features.

Taking a good grip on the bars of the door, Omega braced himself and yanked. The metal groaned and something popped in the locking mechanism, but the door held. Shifting his grip he yanked again. More metal gave with an ear-shattering screech.

“Hey, hey, hey! You’re going to bring the guards down on us,” Lucifer said from his cell, suddenly at the bars and trying to peer out at Omega without touching the warding. “At least be smart and open my cell. He’s useless. I can help you!”

The vampire ignored him and hauled on the bars a third time. The metal gave with a banshee screech and the cell door flew open. Castiel marched through the opening with a vindictive smile stretching his broad face.

“What about him?” Omega asked, nodding at Lucifer’s cell. Castiel paused outside the bars and the King of Lies gave him a sheepishly beseeching smile.

“I should leave you here,” Castiel growled.

“But you won’t,” Lucifer said with a knowing grin.

“The only reason I’m considering setting you free, too, is to keep you out of Asmodeus’s hands. Let us be clear about that.” 

“Technically, you’re not springing me,” Lucifer sneered, gesturing at where Omega had moved to start wrenching at the devil’s cell door. “He is.”

“Shut up or I’ll find out what your blood tastes like,” Omega growled, hauling on the door again. Cas turned his back to the bars, watching for the guards that had come and gone since they first arrived here. Omega succeeded in warping the metal door free of its moorings without any demons showing up.

“Where are all the guards?” Cas asked as Lucifer stepped out of his cell.

“I ate them. Let’s go,” Omega said, turning his back on the devil and stalking down the corridor.

<<>>

Dean raced down the county road at a speed he could never achieve as a human. He felt strong and invincible with Sam’s blood coursing through him and guilt nipped at his heels like a pack of wild dogs. He should have insisted they cage him or kill him. Sure, conventional methods might not get rid of him permanently, but they should have at least tried. He could think of a dozen options they could have attempted to control him. Of course, they all violated the hell out of the Geneva Conventions, but that wasn’t the point.

The Eastern horizon was growing light, dawn hovering at the edge of the world with imperative imminence. The excess light didn’t hurt Dean, but a new instinct shrilled somewhere deep in his psyche, commanding him to seek shelter before the sun crested the edge of the planet. Judging himself far enough away from the bunker, he slowed to a walk and contemplated ignoring that demanding instinct and letting the sun take him. Would it kill him? It didn’t kill the vampires he knew, but they had already established they couldn’t depend on that lore for what he had become.

He knew he couldn’t trust anything Omega had told him…not that anything the vampire said had turned out to be a lie yet, but he’d run and that automatically put him in the ‘can’t be trusted’ category. Why would he run if they could trust him? So, Dean couldn’t be certain Omega would have told him if the sun was a problem for their specific breed of vampire. He turned to face the Eastern horizon, squinting into the growing light. 

He had left the bunker and his brother and Baby with a thought to finding a way to kill himself, but now that he was contemplating just that, it felt wrong. It was one thing for Sam to slice his head off or for Cas to douse him in holy flame. They would be protecting themselves and others from his depredations, but doing the deed himself felt like giving up. He’d had plenty of low points in his life, but even when he believed they were up shit creek without a paddle, there was always part of him ready to listen to and implement a plan if it had any chance of success. It just wasn’t in him to go out without a fight. Not really.

But, he couldn’t stay in the bunker. He couldn’t risk hurting Sammy again. He didn’t want to risk hurting anyone. Well, any human. And…okay, to be honest, there might be more than a few humans he wouldn’t lose any sleep over killing, but none of them resided in the bunker. He couldn’t go back, but he wouldn’t die. He could hunt and maybe he could feed off of what he hunted. Many of them were very close to human. As long as he stayed away from innocents and those he cared about, he could make this work.

Grateful that the road he’d chosen ran parallel to the river that ran near the bunker, he made his way down to the water. Before the sun cast its rays on Lebanon, Dean located a drainage pipe deep enough and big enough to fit in. It stank of rotting vegetation and dead animals and the trickle of water down the center soaked his clothes when he laid down, but it provided the shelter he needed and sleep took him moments after he settled in.


	12. Chapter 12

Sam paced in the library, avoiding the puddle of congealed blood on the floor as he dialed Cas’s phone number. The angel picked up on the second ring.

“Hello, Sam.”

“Cas! I don’t care where you are or if you’ve found Omega yet or not. You’ve got to get back here. Dean lost it. He bit me and now he’s disappeared.”

“Wait. Slow down. What happened?”

Sam plunged into a rapid explanation of Dean waking up, Sam going out of his way to steal blood from a hospital and Dean upchucking said blood all over the library floor before attacking Sam.

“When I came to, he was gone. No note. He’s not answering any of his phones. Worst of all…” Sam turned in his pacing and froze, his throat locking up mid-step. At the far end of the library, Castiel stumbled out of a rough landing and Omega dropped to the ground beside him, covered in blood and retching. Cas didn’t have a phone in his hand.

“What, Sam? What’s worse?” Cas’s rough voice grated out of the cellphone Sam held to his ear, but it couldn’t be him.

“He left Baby. Who…who is this?”

The voice on the other end of the phone fell silent for a moment and then a low, decidedly un-Castiel chuckle rumbled across the connection.

“That’s good to know, Sam,” Asmodeus said in his normal voice. “Good to know, indeed. I’ll be sure to use this knowledge for the good of all demon kind.” 

With that parting shot, the demon hung up. Sam winced and pulled the phone away from his ear, glaring at it like it had personally betrayed him. He wanted to rewind the last few minutes, realize a fraction sooner who he was really spilling his guts to, but he couldn’t undo what had just happened. Asmodeus knew what Dean had become and that he was outside the bunker on his own. Gritting his teeth, he tossed the phone on the table and hurried toward the angel and vampire.

“What happened?” he asked, kneeling down next to Omega. Cas turned, searching his perimeter for something and he cursed when he didn’t find it. Sam’s head jerked up and he scowled. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d heard the angel curse.

“I had Lucifer with me. He must have slipped away in transit.”

“Lucifer?!” Sam shot back up to his considerable height, glaring down at Cas. “Lucifer is stuck in another dimension.”

“No, Sam, he’s not. You are regrettably behind on current developments.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed and his expression hardened. “Catch me up.”

<<>>

Sam scowled at Cas and then turned his look on Omega before dipping his head to rub the bridge of his nose. “So, Omega didn’t run off. You didn’t go chasing him and I’ve been telling Asmodeus all about what’s been happening with Dean since the two of you left? Also, Lucifer is free, a bigger, badder version of Michael is preparing to bowl over our world and Jack is STILL in the wind?”

“I believe that sums it up,” Cas said with a perturbed crease between his brows. Omega stared at Sam with a tight, sobering look.

“I can smell the blood on you, Sam,” Omega said. “What happened?”

Sam glanced up at Omega and winced. “There’s too much on my plate right now. Lucifer, Michael and Jack are going to have to take care of themselves for the moment. We need to find Dean.”

“What happened to Dean?” Castiel asked, a thunderous scowl creasing his face. Sam sighed and repeated everything he’d unknowingly told Asmodeus on the phone. Cas reached for him to heal his wound and Omega caught his arm.

“Let me look at it, first. It might give me some insight into Dean’s state of mind.”

 

“What makes you think you’ll have a better idea of what Dean’s thinking than us?” Sam asked, clenching his teeth around the impotent rage that threatened to choke him. With everything going wrong, he just wanted to lash out, but didn’t dare. It never helped and wouldn’t, now.

“You may know the human Dean, but I have seen hundreds of transitions and you absolutely cannot discount the influence of the hunger on the human psyche.” Omega locked eyes with Sam and the younger Winchester looked away first, forced to concede the vampire’s point.

Castiel scowled at Omega, but he sat back in his chair. The vampire rose and came around the table. Sam flinched when he touched his shoulder.

“Will you show it to me? I can see that my touch bothers you.”

Sam glanced over his shoulder, surprised by Omega’s request. He still hadn’t decided whether to classify the vampire as a friend or an enemy, but his consideration edged him a touch closer to friend territory. Reaching up, he pulled his shirts up over his head, leaving them bunched on his arms and pulled the bandage free. He hissed as the gauze stuck on the raw flesh.

“Two bites,” Omega said with a tsking sound. “He must have been very close to the edge.”

Sam snorted and pressed the bandage back into place. “He was over the edge and gone. Came right at me without a weapon when I had a machete.”

Cas rose and came around the table before Sam could pull his shirts back into place. He tugged the bandage back off and pressed a hand over Sam’s shoulder. Golden light shone under his touch and he pulled away to reveal fresh, unblemished skin. Sam sighed and rolled his shoulders. “Thanks, Cas.”

“He didn’t come at you without a weapon. He had his fangs and his speed. You must stop thinking of him as human, Sam,” Omega said. Sam glared up at him and pulled his shirts back on over his head.

“Believe me, I’m starting to get that. So, what kind of insight can you give us about Dean’s state of mind?”

“I can tell you that he’ll be wracked with guilt and not thinking straight. He didn’t kill you, so he came to and stuck around long enough to put a bandage on you. He most likely left to protect you. He’ll try to avoid feeding, so we need to watch for deaths in the area.”

“Deaths?” Sam’s head came up like a hound on a scent and he glared hard at the vampire. “Dean won’t kill. He didn’t kill me.”

“His control is good, but not that good. He will break down and feed and if he holds off as long as I think he will, there will be fatalities,” Omega said. “The stronger the will, the harder the fall when the hunger wins.” His tone left no room for doubt. Sam looked to Cas and the angel looked worried.

“We have to find him, Cas. We have to stop him.”


	13. Chapter 13

The vampire emerged from the drainage pipe, green eyes hungry and oblivious to the filth that coated him. The plant rot and fetid water soaked into his plaid shirt and jeans registered as neither threat, nor food, so it was of no consequence. The animalistic hunger that ruled the otherwise intelligent brain recognized only threat or food. Everything else was inconsequential. Deep in the thing’s mind, higher thought stirred, protested, but the hunger shoved it down, smothering it the way a demon rides its vessel. Dean lifted his head, scenting the wind like a hound on a trail. The lines of his face held no true emotion, only the single-minded focus of a predator on the hunt. He turned, eyes narrowed to sharpen his vision and he took off, surging up the river bank and racing across a dark field planted thick with corn, toward the distant scent of blood. Food.

The scent grew stronger as he neared the farm house in the center of the fields, attached to the main road by a ribbon of beaten dirt. No one would hear the screams. He slowed as he neared the edge of the corn field, angling toward the back of the house. He paused just inside the line of tall vegetation and eyed the pair of small humans playing in a box of sand. A flood light on the back of the house illuminated their activity. The hunger didn’t question the children outside after dark or their ragged appearance. Eager anticipation thrilled down his nerves. They would be an easy kill, succulent and sweet. One, alone, might not be enough, scrawny as they were, but the pair of them would more than satisfy.

He crouched down, easing forward on the balls of his feet, fingers touching the ground for additional stability. Muscles rippled in his thighs and back as he flitted across the open ground between the edge of the cornfield and a towering Sycamore tree that hovered over the back of the house like a protective mother hen. The children didn’t notice a thing, absorbed in their game of building up a mound of sand so they could knock it down again. High-pitched giggles drifted on the breeze and the vampire’s throat burned with thirst, hunger, need. He envisioned the attack, the feeding, and something deep down stirred. Something frowned and protested. With a snarl, the predator rushed from behind the tree and finally the children looked up, saw death barreling down on them, fangs bared, and they screamed.

Dean, the true Dean, buried deep under the oppressive hunger, reared up and lashed out with an emphatic, “NO!” Feed he must, but not on these. The boys, twins by their look and no older than six, fled toward the back door of the house, screeching. Dean stumbled and went to his knees, panting and clutching his head. The boys reached the house, dashed inside and babbled through their terrified tears about a monster in the yard. A woman’s tired voice tried to ease their fear, assured them that there were no monsters in the yard. Something about the tone of her voice, the worry, the desperate need to quiet the boys triggered something in the part of Dean’s mind that still held onto morals and a sense of right and wrong.

Deep in the house, a door slammed. A man’s angry voice roared out and the woman’s words died as the boys’ sobs took over. “I’m tryin’ t’ sleep in here! What’ve I told the two of you ‘bout keepin’ yer traps shet?”

Dean’s head swung around, eyes narrowed toward the back of the house. The hunger only recognized food inside, but Dean heard fear in the woman’s silence and the increased sobs from the boys. Heavy footsteps stomped through the wood-floored house and his sharp hearing picked up the slithering slide of a belt escaping the loops on a pair of pants. The woman’s voice rose, babbling, begging for the man to forgive the boys. They didn’t mean to disturb his sleep. It wouldn’t happen again. She promised. She swore. The first crack of leather hitting flesh shivered from the house and Dean darted for the backdoor with a boy’s shrill, pained scream tearing through his ears.

Inside, a woman held one boy, tears brimming in her eyes as she watched the man pull back to land another blow on the other twin. Bruises of varying ages colored the boy’s bare back and bottom, some shaped suspiciously like a hand and others matching the growing welt from the belt. Dean registered the tableau in the blink of an eye. The hunger demanded food, saw nothing but sweet satiation in the woman’s tears, the boy’s bruises and the fierce anger of the man’s face, but Dean…Dean saw an abuser and his victims. He eased off on fighting back the hunger and instead, directed it. Not the boys, not the woman, but the man. It could have the man.

A rough hand caught the man’s wrist as it descended for another blow. The belt was wrenched from the stubby fingers and the sobbing boy tumbled to the ground as the vampire, the monster they’d created the ruckus to escape, yanked the man to his feet. Dean grabbed a double fistful of shirt and drove the man into the wall with a snarl. The back of the man’s head impacted with the drywall hard enough to leave a small crater behind and his eyes stared dazedly off into space. Dean lunged for his throat, ripping at the tender flesh, gnawing into the frantic beat of his carotid artery and swallowing down the fountain of blood that gushed forth. Behind him, the woman screamed and grabbed for the boys, ushering them out the door and into a headlong pelt down the dirt driveway.

The hunger took note of the woman and boys fleeing the house, followed their progress, but the blood pouring down his throat had taken the edge off and Dean was more in control than not. He pulled back, trying to disengage carefully, but there wasn’t much left to disengage from. The side of the man’s throat was ravaged, deep gashes pumping out arterial blood. His heart stuttered in his chest. There wasn’t time to get to a hospital, or even time for Dean to figure out where he was to call Cas to his side and heal the man. With a low growl, he dipped down and caught the pumping blood in his mouth, sealing his lips over the wound as best he might to finish drinking his fill. He couldn’t save the man’s life, but he could use it to feed to satiation so that he might last longer, spare another life, stay himself long enough to find a monster that needed to die anyway. This had been a close call. The man’s death would tug at his conscience enough as it was, but if he’d killed the kids or the woman? He shoved the thought away and let the man’s body slide to the floor as the heart stuttered into silence for all time.

<<>>

The Smith Center police dispatch normally didn’t see much traffic besides a few domestic disputes and the occasional drunk and disorderly, so Sam perked up when a dispatcher sent out a call for a violent assault and possible homicide. He turned down the other frequencies he was monitoring and wrote down the address for the attack. 

“Cas!” The angel entered the room as Sam shrugged into his suit jacket and pocketed the fake FBI badge that would keep the police from interfering with his investigation. He had a nugget of a story to explain why he would most likely beat them to the scene of the crime. Castiel read the address on the paper Sam handed him and laid a hand on his shoulder to fly them to the location. Omega’s shout to wait followed in their wake, but they were gone by the time he cursed at being left behind.

The first thing that hit him was the stench of blood. After a lifetime of hunting things that could, and often did, rip humans into ribbons, Sam thought he should be used to the sight and smell of blood, but it still made his stomach turn. The body sat, propped against the wall, head lolling at a grotesque angle with the right side of its throat torn wide. A sticky wash of blood glued the man’s tank top to his skin and painted the flesh in garish rivulets. Sam knelt next to the corpse, fastidiously avoiding the small pool of blood that had formed under the man’s buttocks. He pulled out a pen and used it to prod at the man’s chin. The whole body moved with the prod, deep into rigor mortis.

“Maybe it wasn’t Dean. Surely, he wouldn’t leave this much blood if he was feeding,” Sam said, but he didn’t believe his words any more than Cas did. The wound looked exactly like a vampire’s bite, but a closer look showed only a couple of the punctures were deep enough to be made by fangs. A normal vampire would leave many deep punctures. A vampire like Omega, or Dean, would only leave two and the rest would look just like a crazed human’s bite. Like this.

“He would if he wasn’t in control,” Cas said, remembering how Omega had told Dean he didn’t need to ravage the angel’s throat the first time he fed. Would this man have lived if Omega had been here to manage Dean’s feeding? As much as he hated to admit it, the vampire had proven useful and done his best to guide Dean through this transition. “How much of a head start does he have?”

Sam examined the corpse, using the pen to move it around so he wouldn’t leave any fingerprints. If they could be in and out before the cops arrived, he wouldn’t have to use his shaky cover story or flash his fake credentials. He preferred not to, this close to the bunker, if he could afford it. He didn’t want to piss in his own pond, after all.

“A couple of hours, at least. Most likely more, with rigor mortis at this stage,” Sam said. He wasn’t a medical examiner, but he’d worked with enough of them and enough corpses to have a general idea of what he was looking at. “If he’s running as fast as Omega can, he could be anywhere in a hundred mile radius by now.”

Sam stood and pulled a rag from his coat pocket that he always kept on him in case he needed to wipe down fingerprints. Working just on the outside edge of the law had taught him precautions like that. He wiped the blood from the end of the pen and tucked it all away again.

“We have to find a faster way to get to him, before a police call comes in. This won’t be like tracking a vampire nest. He’ll know better than to go to ground anywhere. He’ll do what we’ve always done. He’ll keep moving, keep his choices random, never hit the same place twice.”

“He will look for the deserving to feed on,” Cas said, staring down at the corpse. “He will learn from this and keep himself to places and areas less likely to have innocents for the hunger to prey on.”

Sam cut a hard look at the angel. Cas always seemed so oblivious, but when it came to Dean, he had an uncanny way of knowing what the elder Winchester was thinking.

“I think you’re right. That’s a start.”


	14. Chapter 14

Darien scowled at the news article that had flashed into his email. They knew the Winchesters holed up somewhere in Northern Kansas, but no one knew exactly where, or if they did, they weren’t talking. He had subscribed to every newspaper in the area, like he always did when they started a hunt. Tammy was watching traffic cams and local security feeds, hoping to spot Sam shopping somewhere, but Northern Kansas was mostly rural and didn’t have much in the way of surveillance cameras.

The article in his email contained details of the first violent murder the area had seen in...well, a while. There wasn’t much data on the crime statistics in the area available online. These people kept to themselves for the most part and that worked in the Winchesters’ favor. He scanned the lines of the article, his frown deepening. A man had been killed, throat ripped out by a wild animal according to the police report, but this area didn’t have much that could take down a grown man and Darien couldn’t imagine the Winchesters allowed anything supernatural to survive for long in their vicinity.

“Hol-eee shit!”

Darien’s head jerked up at Tammy’s exclamation.

“He’s alive!”

“Who’s alive?” Darien abandoned his own laptop to join Tammy at hers. She angled the screen so he could see and pressed play on a grainy security cam feed outside of a shopping center that held a bank and a laundromat. The footage clearly showed Dean Winchester entering the laundromat in filthy, gore soaked clothes and later leaving again in different, clean clothes.

“If he’s alive, then Sam won’t have a reason to come after you,” Darien said with a broad grin. Tammy nodded, but continued scowling at the footage. Something felt off about it.

“Where IS Sam? Dean looks like he’s cleaning up after a hunt, but a place like that? It’s too open. He didn’t have those clean clothes with him when he went in, so he must have stolen them. He’s acting like he’s on the run. Why?”

Darien scowled and returned to his screen. He scanned the article still on display again.

“Weren’t you hunting a vampire with them?”

“Sort of? It wasn’t like any vampire I’ve ever run across, but it had fangs and it drank my blood, so...close enough.”

Darien sat back in his chair, eyes closed in thought, mind churning.

“I think...I think maybe you did kill Dean...or gave him a death wound, at least. What if the vampire turned him? I think he’s gone native.”

Tammy watched the footage again, scowling.

“If he’s gone native, Sam should be hunting him...but Sam wouldn’t kill his own brother. Those two...they walk through hell for each other. On a shockingly regular basis.”

“Which means, we have to do it. I think Dean may have already killed one person.” He turned his own laptop around to show her the article. “He’s feeding. If he’s killed once, he’ll do it again. We can’t count on Sam to kill him. He’s too sentimental.”

Tammy bit her lip and her shoulders drooped. “You realize the odds of him killing us first are high, right?”

“We have to try,” Darien said with a shrug. “Dean Winchester is a scary motherfucker, human. With fangs, blood lust and the kind of speed you described, he’s a monster’s monster, and he obviously doesn’t have any issue with killing humans. Not anymore.”

Tammy watched her footage again and shuddered. “We’re gonna need back-up. A lot of it.”

<<>>

Omega was pacing in the library when Cas brought Sam back to the bunker. The vampire rounded on them, eyes narrowed with anger.

“Where is he?” He stalked toward them, glaring between them as through one or the other had Dean hidden behind them.

“Gone,” Sam said, scowling. “He’s smart. He’ll get as far away as he can, as fast as he can.”

“This is your fault!” Omega turned on Cas, baring his fangs and hissing. “If you had told Lucifer where he could stuff it, we wouldn’t have been at that bar when Asmodeus found us and both of us would have been here to keep Dean from attacking Sam!”

Cas bristled, the shadow he cast on the wall bulging at the shoulders and a faint blue light shining in the depths of his pupils. “Don’t underestimate Lucifer. He is my brother and I know what he’s capable of!”

“Not much,” Omega scoffed. “I had to break him out of that cell!”

Cas took a step forward, reaching for the vampire and Sam slipped between them, putting a hand on the angel’s chest.

“Not now!” he barked, glaring over his shoulder and then back at Cas. “It doesn’t matter who did what or whose fault it is. We have to find Dean and arguing isn’t going to help.”

Omega glared up at the taller Winchester and then closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, visibly centering himself.

“You are correct. My apologies. I’m…worried about him. Just as you don’t know much about my brand of vampirism, I still don’t know enough about this world to know if something might be able to truly harm him.”

Sam’s expression softened. He could empathize with the vampire. He worried about Dean and his reckless antics, too.

“First thing’s first. We need to figure out what radius to look in. Have you ever clocked just how fast you can run?”

“No.” Omega shook his head and backed off. “Every vampire is different. Some aren’t anywhere near as fast as I am, some are faster, but I’ve never heard of a vampire that could sustain the higher speeds indefinitely. Not without stopping to feed all the time. We are like hunting cats, built for sprinting, not for a marathon.”

Sam glanced at Cas and took his hand back when he confirmed the angel had calmed down.  
“Good. That’s good to hear. We’ll either have a clearer path of victims to follow or he won’t get that far.” He stopped and frowned at the idea of a swath of victims killed by his brother being a good thing but he shrugged it off. They couldn’t hold Dean responsible for what he did under the influence of the hunger. They just had to find him so they could help him control it.

Gesturing for Omega to follow, he fetched his laptop and opened it to settle in to what he did best: research.

<<>>

“I know where he’s going.” Sam sat back from the computer, feeling particularly stupid. The screen displayed several records of recent car thefts between Kansas and Lake Michigan, a couple of them found abandoned a little over a hundred miles from where they were stolen. He should have known Dean would steal a car rather than feed to fuel his abilities.

Cas opened his eyes and leaned forward as Omega stopped his pacing and rounded on them. “Where?”

“Chicago.” Sam glanced at Cas and the angel’s eyes widened. He nodded at him, but directed his words at Omega. “There are several supernatural families that run Chicago…like the mafia, but not exactly human. With one notable exception, we mostly leave them alone. They police themselves, and if we’re completely honest, they’re a bigger bite than we’re prepared to chew. Considering we’ve saved the world a couple of times, that should tell you something. I should have thought of it sooner. If Dean wants a place full of supernatural creepy crawlies that he can munch on and he’s virtually indestructible, now, Chicago is his best bet.”

“That makes a great amount of sense,” Cas said, tapping the table. “The problem is that Chicago is very highly populated. There is as much risk of Dean killing humans as something supernatural, there.”

“Not to mention not all the supernatural people there are actually bad guys,” Sam said, scowling at his computer. Omega’s eyebrows rose in surprise at Sam’s comment. He hadn’t realized the Winchesters were capable of understanding that a supernatural creature might not be evil by nature. Maybe there was hope for Dean, if they could just convince him that his new nature did not make him more of a threat to anyone than he chose to be, assuming he learned the control he needed.

“Alright, let’s pack up the car and head out.” Sam closed the laptop’s lid and headed for his room.


	15. Chapter 15

Dean skulked through the crumbling, graffiti-tagged streets of Chicago’s West Pullman neighborhood. Abandoned warehouses dotted the landscape and he could smell something not quite human in the air. He was hoping for shapeshifters, since they were ostensibly human and might bleed something he could choke down.

Unfortunately, his newly heightened sense of smell didn’t come with an instruction manual, so he couldn’t identify what he was smelling until he managed to find the source of the scent.

The hunger roiled through the back of his brain, like an angry, stalking tiger. He had it under control, but was glad no humans had crossed his path in this ghost town of old industry. The smell of fresh, fully human blood might break that thin, brittle barrier that held the hunger back and he couldn’t guarantee he’d pull up long enough to establish innocence or guilt in his victim. Worse, he couldn’t guarantee he wouldn’t kill and that, more than anything, made him desperate to find a monster he could feed on.

The scent of not-quite-human led him to a warehouse that looked like it had seen better days, but wasn’t falling to pieces like some of the condemned hulks around it. He approached the building, keeping to the shadows and listening for the footsteps of anyone that might reveal his presence. Before he could find a door, a new, vaguely familiar scent snaked its way into his sinuses. 

It reminded him of Sam and the vague wrongness he’d noticed in his brother’s scent when he bandaged him up, but this smell carried the wrongness thicker, more cloying. It was like a pie with too much sugar: tasty and likely addicting, but too much might kill him.

He recognized the demon that stepped out of the shadows on sight, not because he knew the man, or even because he could see his true demon face, but his heightened senses picked up the miniscule tell-tale signs of a body controlled by an entity that had not lived in it since birth. Most demons controlled their vessels impeccably, but even the most experienced would suffer some disconnect between their idiosyncrasies and the body’s established muscle memories. Nothing meshed completely.

Dean grinned, baring fangs, and eased down into a crouch. He couldn’t be sure until he tried, but it stood to reason that if he could drink the blood of an angel’s vessel, surely he could stomach that of a demon’s vessel. The creature blinked black eyes at him and two others joined him, one male, one female, also with black for eyes.

“Awesome.” Dean’s grin widened. “A feast.”

“Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus…”

Dean jerked at the beginning of the familiar incantation and the demons flinched back. He snarled, rounding on the source of the voice, expecting to find that Sam had come after him, but it wasn’t Sam stalking him. He didn’t know the hunter that spoke or his immediate companions, but he did recognize a couple of faces behind them. He knew some of these people, had hunted at their sides. He knew them as allies, but the set to their features made it clear they considered him as much the enemy as the demons. An uncomfortable mix of anger and resignation squeezed through his chest.

They had all had their moments: mistakes made, innocent blood on their hands, and many of them had their own share of human monsters they’d taken down. They weren’t any better than him and he was here, hunting, just like them. What right did they have to judge him? But there was no doubt. The demons weren’t their target. He was.

“Dean Winchester. My name is Darien. I’m friends with Tammy and we know what happened to you,” said the tallest hunter that led the group. “Stand down and we’ll make this as quick and painless as possible.”

“Tammy?” Dean scoffed, a small portion of his mind taking note of the fleeing footsteps of the demons that had ceded the field to the hunters. “You mean, the Tammy that bailed on us at the first chance? That Tammy?”

“With your history, can you blame her?” Darien shot back. “You and Sam have quite a reputation, and as far as she could tell, she’d killed you. She wasn’t going to stick around for similar treatment, even if it was an accident.”

Dean clenched his teeth, throttling back on the anger that goaded the hunger roiling beneath the surface. As Darien edged closer, the scent of his blood permeated the area, backed by all the other warm, human hearts beating behind him.

“Well, see, here’s the problem. She did kill me. Bullet to the heart will do that. The vampire we were hunting brought me back and that’s the whole reason we’ve come to this. We didn’t come after her. She’s sent you after us. So, who’s the real problem?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Darien shifted his grip on the machete in his hand. “You’ve already killed once. We can’t just let you go.”

“I would rather not fight you,” Dean said, shaking his head, “but if you insist, let’s rumble.”

The human part of him winced at the idea of fighting and possibly killing these hunters, but the hunger jumped with glee. He would kill them if he must and there was no point in wasting the blood.

Darien drew a revolver from a holster tucked into the waistband of his pants. The man beside him lifted a rifle with a curiously narrow bore. Behind them, the other hunters ranged out, drawing weapons of their own and moving to encircle him. Dean eased down into a crouch and something in his awareness shifted. The world narrowed down to this place, just him and the hunters, every movement they made tracking across his vision, analyzed and categorized by level of threat. The hunters’ movements seemed to grow slow, as though he had all the time in the world to react. 

The hunter with the small bore rifle pulled the trigger and a bright red tuft of feathers attached to a metal cylinder appeared in Dean’s chest. The dart filled with dead man’s blood deployed into his flesh and in any normal vampire, he would be down and out for the count. Baring his fangs, Dean knocked the dart out of his skin and snarled.

“Those don’t work on me, morons!”

No less than three guns went off as he lunged for the hunter with the dart gun. At least one ripped through his shoulder and he hissed as the pain blossomed. It washed through him and his preternatural healing quickly closed the wound, but blood soaked into his jacket. The hunter dropped the rifle and back-pedaled, pulling a machete from its sheath as Darien emptied his clip into Dean. The bullets punched through his flesh, spilling more blood and enraging him further, but the hunger had fixated on the hunter that darted him. 

The man swung the machete at Dean’s neck, but the elder Winchester caught the blow and swung with a vicious right hook that turned the man’s head and drew blood. The scent of fresh, human blood flooded his sinuses and the hunger took over, shoving any compassion or empathy Dean had left into the dim recesses of his mind. Seeing an opportunity, he lunged for the hunter’s throat, but Darien appeared at their side, wielding a kukri with deadly precision. Ducking, Dean narrowly avoided losing his head, taking the jagged slash across his collar bone. Blood spilled down his front from the vicious cut and he turned on Darien with a snarl.

At that moment, the demons reappeared…with reinforcements. Uncertain who to prioritize their attacks on, some of the hunters tackled the demons, while others stayed focused on Dean. Several of the demons wielded weapons he could only describe as whip swords. They lashed out with the thin, steel blades and a hunter caught in the way howled as the weapon laid their flesh open to the bone. Snarling, Dean went for the demons. He could feed on them as easily as the hunters and they had the advantage.

Two of the demons circled behind him and no matter how aware, how fast he was, there was always one at his back. He lunged for the closest demon, punching him hard enough to shatter the vessel’s jaw, but behind him, two of those swords slashed down his back, flaying the skin to the bone.

“Son of a bitch!” He turned on the demons behind him as blood poured down his back in rivulets, draining his strength with it. Another sword tip caught him in the side and a bullet punched through his torso, followed by two more in a close, neat grouping. Easily fifty caliber rounds, they tore through his heart, lungs, and shattered a vertebra, killing all feeling below that point. He collapsed with a snarl and the demons closed in on him.

Dean snarled and snapped, grabbing for anyone that drew near, the hunger seeking something…anything he could sing his fangs into. The demons surrounded him stabbing and pummeling. He fought, but he wasn’t like them. He couldn’t animate a non-functioning body.

The mass of bodies drove him down and from out of the left side of his vision, a metal pipe crashed down on the side of his face. Bone shattered and his vision blacked out on that side. The worst headache he had ever experienced ripped through his temporal lobes and the rest of him fell limp.

“Dean! No!”

He’d lost hearing on the shattered side of his face, so the words and everything around him came through muffled, but he would know Castiel’s voice anywhere. He picked up a flurry of movement at the edge of his vision and blinked his one good eye at a seeming whirlwind of violence that ripped through the horde of demons in his field of vision. He recognized the red hair streaked with white that belonged to the creature that had turned him. He tried to puzzle out why Omega would be helping him when the vampire had previously abandoned him, but that last blow had done something to his brain, so logical thought processes weren’t as easy as they should be.

Distantly, he could hear Sam berating someone, shouting orders and then Cas was there, crouching over him and rolling him to his back. Paralyzing pain screamed down his nerves and his decimated jaw opened in an agonized scream he couldn’t give voice to. He blinked his one good eye in surprise at the anguish twisting his friend’s face.

Cas pulled out a blade and sliced it down his arm, aiming to spill as much blood as possible. Had he been human, it would have been a killing wound.

“I can’t heal you,” he growled, holding the bleeding slash over Dean’s mouth. “Whatever you are is as immune to my healing as it is to my smite. You’ll have to heal yourself.” He pressed a thumb into the edge of the cut, grimacing with the pain as he brought the blood flowing faster to pour into Dean’s ravaged mouth. He swallowed reflexively.

With more stabs and jerks of pain, his body healed, knitting bone and flesh together, restoring nerves and sensation. He roared with the agony of it, twitching and convulsing. The moment he healed enough to move, he lunged for the angel’s throat.

Castiel fell back with Dean on top of him, fangs tearing at his flesh. Dean gulped the gush of blood down as his shattered face re-formed into something recognizable. The angel let loose with a garbled shout, his good hand grabbing for Dean’s shoulder.

As intent as a hungry infant with a bottle, Dean fed, and fed, and fed. The hand gripping his shoulder loosened, dropping to the ground and still he fed. Castiel’s head lolled to the side, eyes glowing a brilliant blue before they dimmed and fell vacant.

When, finally, he couldn’t draw anything further from the ravaged throat, Dean lifted his head, fangs bared and hungry eyes searching for his next meal. He surged to his feet only to find a demon thrust at him, head at an odd angle and paralyzed from the neck down, but still in there, blinking in stunned surprise. Omega held it up above his head like a supplicant with an offering. He snarled out one word, “Feed!” 

Dean fell on the offering, snatching it from Omega’s fingers and driving it to the ground. Omega monitored him for a moment. The demons lay sprawled around them, most of them ripped into separate parts, those few remaining in their vessels twitching on the ground. Blood soaked the elder vampire and a wild, protective light shone in his eyes as he moved to glare at the hunters looking on in aggregate horror. Sam stood between the vampires and the hunters, gun in hand and a warning look on his face. He’d shoot them if he needed to.

Satisfied that the immediate threats were dealt with and Dean was still glutting himself on the paralyzed demon, Omega moved to Castiel’s side. He turned the angel’s head and slapped his cheek. The eyelids blinked, once, and then fell shut entirely. He breathed a sigh of relief. If Castiel was still alive after that, it wasn’t likely he would die, now. All they could do was make him comfortable until the venom wore off and he could heal the damage Dean had done.

Omega straightened the angel’s legs out and placed his hands on his stomach before returning to his progeny. Dean’s feeding had slowed down and he released the demon’s throat as Omega knelt next to him.

“Castiel is alive. The venom just needs to run its course and he will be able to heal himself,” Omega said and some of the tension in Dean’s shoulders drained out of him. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine.” Dean sat back, giving the older vampire a narrow glare. “What made you decide to come back? Surely not a guilty conscience.”

“I didn’t leave,” Omega said with a scowl. “I was taken, as was Castiel. Sam told us that Asmodeus lied to him with Cas’s voice. Your information is wrong.”

Dean bared his fangs and pushed away from Omega, not sure what to believe. He surged to his feet, hyped up on a cocktail of angel and demon blood. The left side of his face still ached, but the worst of the damage had faded into a faint tracing of scars that were, themselves, fading as well.

“Don’t!” Sam’s warning brought Dean’s attention to where his brother held the other hunters at bay. A few had raised guns when Dean stood and something vicious swept through him at the sight of those firearms pointed in his brother’s direction. A low growl rumbled up out of his throat and he started in their direction.

“Dean, wait.” Omega laid a restraining hand on his arm and he turned on him with a snarl. “At least let me disarm them so no one accidentally shoots Sam.”

Dean paused, surprised that Omega’s thoughts were as much for Sam’s safety as his own. He nodded and Omega vanished with that uncanny speed that Dean suspected he hadn’t inherited.

In moments, every hunter was nursing some kind of injury from having their weapons ripped from their hands at supersonic speed. Omega appeared at Sam’s side, dropping a pile of guns, blades and one shattered dart rifle at his feet. The hunters quickly realized that Sam had them covered with his pistol and hands went up in the air, where they could.

“Alright, now,” Dean said, stepping up beside Sam while Omega took up a position on his other side. As always, Sam had inches on Dean and positively dwarfed Omega, but even with the only weapon in play, the hunters dismissed him as the lesser threat. Menace rolled off of the two vampires in palpable waves.

“I know that you were all doing what you thought was best,” Dean went on, fighting back the primal need to rip them all to shreds for even seeming to threaten his brother, “but your best was wrong. I’m still on your side, always will be. There isn’t a hunter around that’s been in the life long enough to know the ropes that hasn’t made an accidental kill.”

Several of the hunters glanced away or at one another. Everyone had a story they only told after enough liquor had passed down their gullet. Darien scowled, cradling what looked like a broken thumb.

He had eyes only for Sam and the gun in his hand.

“Sam, he’s not your brother anymore,” he said in a careful voice. “He speaks with your brother’s voice and pretends to virtue, but I saw you glance over, just now. I saw the fear in your eyes. He’s a monster. He just ripped out Castiel’s throat when he was trying to help.” He nodded at the angel’s prone form behind them. Dean glanced over his shoulder, the corners of his eyes tightening at the sight of Cas laid out on the ground, as though waiting for burial shrouds. Only the lack of the winged death imprint around him reassured the hunter that he wasn’t dead.

“Castiel knew what would happen and he was willing. He’s not dead or dying,” Omega said, speaking up for the first time. Darien jerked, turning his attention to the smaller vampire, the unknown factor that had already proven himself a dangerous ally for the Winchesters. “Dean does not have to be a threat to you, or to anyone that hasn’t done harm, themselves. We had a…misunderstanding. It won’t happen again.”

Darien glanced from Omega, to Dean, and back, mistrust etched into his features. Dean resisted the urge to bare his fangs by a slim margin. Such a gesture would only make things worse.

“Let’s put it this way,” he said, stepping forward and angling his body to cover Sammy, “you walk away. Turn around and walk away and we’ll call this even. You hear about me killing the innocent in the future, you hunt me then. Until then, this, tonight, never happened.”

Darien glanced around at the scattered demon bodies, and shook his head. “If we let you go, everyone you kill after tonight is on our heads. We can’t risk it.” 

With the smoothest draw Dean had ever seen, the hunter pulled a Sig Sauer .45 compact from the small of his back and fired at the vampire. Knowing Sam couldn’t move as fast and was in the line of fire if he dodged, Dean stood his ground.

The bullet hit him in the heart, passed straight through him and ripped through the outside of Sam’s arm. Dean grunted with the impact, but he didn’t feel the pain right away. The scent of his brother’s blood bloomed all around him and he bared his fangs in a snarl.

Another sound rose counter to his, a snarl so angry and guttural, Dean thought for a moment that the demons had returned with Hellhounds. He turned to see Omega launch himself at the hunters, sounding like the mother hellhound, herself, had appeared, cursing in Hell’s own, damned language.

More guns appeared as the hunters recovered and took action. Omega already had Darien down, fangs ripping at his throat before anyone could properly take aim.

“No!” Sam shouted as the situation fell to pieces. The hole in his arm stung, but was only a flesh wound. Dean followed in his progenitor’s steps and tackled the first hunter to plant a bullet in Omega.

“Hey! HEY!!” Sam yelled, not at his brother, but the other hunters. “Run, you idiots, or they’ll kill you all!”

No one listened. They never did, and as a hunter stood over Dean, too caught up in the blood running down his throat to notice the machete in the man’s hand, Sam raised his gun and fired. The blade fell from nerveless fingers and the hunter crumpled, a neat hole punched between his eyes.

“Dean! Omega! Don’t kill them if you don’t have to! Just hurt them enough to stop them!” Sam grit his teeth and took aim again. He didn’t want to kill the hunters, these men who would have been his allies on any other hunt, but for Dean, he would mow them down and never look back.

Sam couldn’t say whether his words reached the two vampires or if they moved past mindless feeding to more strategic choices, but he only got one more shot off before his target rich environment vanished under the lightning fast attacks of the pair of vampires. He scanned the field, searching for movement, but what hunters weren’t knocked out cold, were groaning and not moving to get up again.

Dean stood over Darien’s limp body, the hunter’s vacant eyes staring off into the darkness. “You should have listened. I might have even let you go,” he said and Sam knew that tone. He recognized the regret Dean felt at doing what had to be done.

“You gave him a chance. It was his choice to ignore it,” he said, moving to stand over the body. With the fight over and the adrenaline draining out of him, his arm ached more than it stung and he reached up to put pressure on the bleeding gash.

Dean turned on Sam and fisted his shirt in a two-handed hold. “What are you doing here? I almost killed you!” He bared his fangs up at his younger brother and Sam hissed at the pain that jolted through his wounded arm.

“You didn’t, though,” Sam said, meeting Dean’s eyes and ignoring the bared fangs so close to his throat. “You lost control, but you didn’t kill me. You’re not a lost cause, Dean. I’m bleeding right here in front of you and you’re not even thinking about feeding, are you?”

Dean’s eyes flicked down to the rivulets of blood leaking through his brother’s fingers, but the hunger lay quiescent within him. After the angel, the demon and the chaser of hunter, he was sated and even his hunger understood that Sam wasn’t food…not unless there wasn’t any other choice.

Dean huffed and let Sam go with a little shove. “Yeah, right. Bitch.”

“Jerk.”


	16. Chapter 16

Dean insisted on driving, but they had barely cleared Chicago’s suburbs before exhaustion swept over him and he almost drove them off the road.

“Dean! Let me drive.” Sam glared at him and the elder Winchester glared back, but when his eyelids drooped in the middle of their stare-off and his shoulders slumped, he had to concede the point.

“You need sleep,” Omega echoed from the backseat. “You have cycled through a tremendous amount of energy tonight. Your system needs to shut down to complete repairs.”

“You make me sound like a computer,” Dean groused, putting the car into park. He gripped the steering wheel for a moment, then opened the door in surrender. Sam opened his door to trade places and then Omega joined them.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Dean asked with narrowed eyes.

“I’m moving to the front seat so you can sleep in the back with Cas,” Omega said and his tone of voice brooked no argument. Sam stood where he’d stopped, at the front of the car, watching the two vampires in their battle of wills. He could see the moment that exhaustion swept over Dean again. His eyes fluttered and his body slumped. He put a hand out to catch himself against the Impala’s frame before he crumpled to the ground.

“He’s right, Dean. You won’t care where you are once you pass out and I have questions we probably need him to answer.”

Dean’s only response was to open the back door and clamber into the seat next to the paralyzed angel. Sam didn’t comment on his brother’s capitulation as he slid in behind the wheel and Omega joined him in the front seat. Dean was asleep and snoring before Sam could get all four tires back on the road.

That was how Dean woke up with his head in Castiel’s lap. At first, he only registered warmth against his cheek, a light pressure on his shoulder and a total sense of contentment that he had almost forgotten after the angel died. Once he fully realized his position, he sat up like a Jack in the Box going off and glared out the window with a faint flush creeping up his neck. He told himself the heat filling his cheeks was anger, but a little voice in the back of his head whisper that he was embarrassed, even if he wouldn’t admit it. He told that voice to shut the hell up and glanced at the other occupants in the car to see who might have noticed.

“Hello, Dean,” Cas said in his gravelly voice that, after years as friends, felt like home to Dean in the same way Sam’s did. “Do you need to feed?”

“I’m fine,” he mumbled, looking back out the window.

“You should feed,” Omega said from the front seat. “It’s better to feed when you are in full control than wait until you are starved. The sun will be up, soon, and while it won’t kill you, it will sap your strength.”

“Yeah, I figured that out a couple of days ago.” Dean sat up and shifted his attention to the others in the car now that it had been established that no one would say anything about his head in Cas’s lap. “But, seriously. I’m fine. I don’t…I don’t want to knock Cas out again already. What happened to you two, anyway?”

Omega briefly explained their capture and escape from Asmodeus. Cas added a few details and Dean cursed when they told him that not only was Lucifer back in their world, but he had gotten away from Cas during their flight out of the demon stronghold.

“We have to find him,” Dean said.

“And Jack,” Cas tacked on. Dean glanced at him, but nodded. They couldn’t forget the Nephilim in all of this.

“Yeah. Jack too. And Mom. And apparently some souped-up version of Michael, not to mention anything else that comes our way on top of this whole vampire thing.” Dean huffed and sat back in his seat, arms crossed. Sam glanced at him in the rear view mirror.

“Our plate’s full,” he said. “That’s nothing new. We handle this the same way we handle everything: one step at a time, one problem at a time. We’ll figure it out. Like we always do.”

“Yeah. Sure.” Dean grumbled, but he glanced at Cas, then at their new ally, Omega, and grudgingly admitted they might have a chance. Maybe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To everyone who has read this fanfic, I’m so glad you stopped by and I truly hope you enjoyed it. I do have a sequel started, but I can’t make any guarantees I will finish it. If I start posting it, rest assured it’s completed. I think I will only be posting completed works from now on unless I notate it’s not completed at the beginning.
> 
> If you did enjoy the fic, please drop a note. If there was something you didn’t like, please drop a note. I’m pretty thick skinned and as much as I love glowing reviews, I *learn* more from critique. I do also share my writing time with my original fiction, so if you’re interested in my original work, just let me know. So, until next time, Carry on my Wayward Son.


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